Heya going for a semi necro reply.
I did post about the weird “melee or spell?” dilemma on VK quite some time ago (actually 1 year ago Feedback on 0.7.4 and VK from current "highest" Voidknight).
Things are mutiple:
- The harder content you push (broken arena levels) the more you levitate towards going ranged and kiting to never get touched a single time
- VK skill distribution is weird, it has a native melee void dmg bonus but more than half the skills are actually scaling with spell dmg and attunement → void rifts from all skills, dev orbs, void echos, void lasers (did you know erasing strike shoots lasers?). What this means is that you want to have sceptres or that unique sword for adaptative spell damage that is like free damage from all void skills procs like rifts echos etc.
- Erasing Strike i played it A LOT but in the end it kinda sucks. You spend too much mana while infinite cast Rive/Vengeance of current patches can probably outdps it. The more damage you add in the ES skill tree the more mana you spend, the tree’s basically got a lot of “non-bonus damage” (because you deal more damage but also spend more mana :psyduck: so it’s got a bunch wasteful skill points). Also half tree is unusable (onkill stuff) or even scales with spell dmg: laser branch which is very funny but yet again tranforms the VK into a caster
- Devouring orb + Cosmic Impact (15base void on contact) + Future Strike (50 base void) is so good and flexible. Cosmic Impact deals damage on touch/contact, so it’s a melee-ish spell in this configuration.
If you add Abyssal Emissions (shoots orbs at range) it’s even more Future strikes now with ranged aoe. - About weapon, due to the mixed hybrid mentioned above, the sword is the best of both worlds, with scepters coming close second. You can try the other weapon types, but to lose the adaptative spell or the flat dmg you disable your VK’s melee or spell side respectively