Lifedrinker implies consumption of life. That to me screams draining enemies of their vitality as you bite into their necks or stab your magic greatsword through their bellies. It evokes a strong fantasy that tons of player’s desperately want and can’t get outside of trash like Vampiric Touch and Enervation.

Lance of Lethargy isn’t good enough on its own to really sell me on it. Because Eldritch Blast based warlocks tend to fire out blasts every round of combat (including the first), this is more likely to have an impact on any given fight than Ray of Frost will, yet it costs a lot more to put on your sheet than Ray of Frost.

Investment of the Chain Master does five things: it gives all your familiars a flying or swimming speed of 40 ft., gives you a bonus action attack with it, gives your familiar's attacks the magic property, shifts the familiar’s save DCs to your spell save DCs, and gives you a reaction to give it resistance to incoming damage.

Improved Pact Weapon, alongside Thirsting Blade, are attempts to empower the martial warlock archetype in nearly exactly the ways you’d expect to see: multi-attack, and Magic Weapon plus some ranged weapon options.

For those of you who love Eldritch Blast and never want to do literally anything else, Grasp of Hadar is another invocation dedicated to empowering the cantrip. This may just be the worst out of all of them, but there may be some rare instances where you can do some neat stuff with it.

I don’t think any warlock needs Gift of the Protectors, nor is it really that much better than Healing Word or other quick methods for getting downed allies up, but it being entirely proactive, preventing some allies from going down at all, and affecting a good chunk of people is valuable in the right group.

Gift of the Ever-Living Ones is ghoulish overkill. The tankiest, damage sponge-iest warlocks have better defensive options than this that will actually help prevent you from going down in the first place like Fiendish Vigor.

This is something you take as a last resort when no other way is open to a needed way to navigate the depths of the sea, and something you swap out the moment you leave the water. If you can help it, don’t take Gift of the Depths.

Ghostly Gaze is brilliant. It’s simple, useful, and only held back by its limitation in quantity of uses, concentration, and prerequisite level. This is an incredible little invocation most any warlock looking to expand their toolkit can look towards taking it to add a new option to play with basically no other character can get.

There are a few issues with Gaze of Two Minds. The first largest I think is the typical use case for it is using it with fellow players. The problem there is it is not even remotely worth it even in some of the most specific cases you’d think it’d shine in.

If your objective is to play a front line warlock who intends to take some hits, in the lower tiers especially, Fiendish Vigor is excellent. Basically, every fight you go into you’ll have 8 bonus temporary hit points to play with.

Far Scribe gives you a form of unlimited casts of a spell: but it's Sending. Amazingly, I think even a spell I’m as lukewarm on as Sending becomes pretty sweet with all the new tools Far Scribe mixes into it.

Eyes of the Runekeeper hypothetically opens up these doors to you, letting your warlock become a universal translator of the written word. Here’s the problem: varied spoken languages just don’t come up all that often in D&D. Common exists. To then need the text to be written for this invocation to have any value puts it in a category of nearly unusable.

How long does an attack’s range need to be to always be in range of monsters? That is a question I think you need to ask yourself before taking Eldritch Spear. Eldritch Blast already has a 120 ft. cast range; how does the bonus 180 feet you’re getting empower the spell? How many more opportunities are you going to have to leverage that cast range?

If you are finding you aren’t using your spell slots (somehow) on your melee warlock, Eldritch Smite is here to transform them into sweet, sweet paladin smite features. If you want to unload a boatload of damage all at once twice per short rest, you can do that.

Eldritch Sight, while being perfectly fine in a vacuum to a class lacking ritual casting, becomes comparatively a lot worse the moment a warlock gets the option to become a ritual caster.

Eldritch Mind is an invocation you pick up near the top end of play when no other invocations really interest you I think, or if you’re feeling particularly dedicated to a single concentration based spell you want to define your character.

Dreadful Word is a mistake. It's that simple.

For an invocation, requiring you be 7th level, you get the opportunity to spend one of your precious two pact magic slots on casting the Confusion spell. Want to cast it again? You have to wait until you finish a long rest just to get the privilege to cast this mediocre spell once more!

Devil’s Sight is superior darkvision without sunlight sensitivity for most warlocks. If you don’t want to commit to hiding in darkness effects of your own creation, it's about as good as a racial trait. That’s definitely not worth your invocation. However, and this is a big however:

Cloak of Flies just gets it. This is an invocation that truly understands the fantasy warlocks are looking to play, and delivers on that fantasy in a unique, fitting way.