Warlock 1-20 Feedback

In Development WoW: Forever Beta Discussion
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I understand that many players probably have had the same or similar experiences, but having just finished leveling to 20 as a warlock, I figured it might be valuable to offer some commentary on the experience. Of note, this was my first character on the WoW Forever beta, and I tried to stick as closely as possible to an organically leveled solo experience i.e. minimal grouping, no dungeons or going out of my way to inflate gear/stats beyond what would be reasonable for someone just leveling through open-world content.

Regarding level 1-5, this felt about as expected. Starting zone (Northshire) was crowded, but not oppressively so. No issues completing quests, though a few outlier quests could prove difficult to an average player due to facing multiple mobs at once with minimal abilities available.

Regarding level 6-10, this was a painful phase of leveling up until getting Voidwalker. Mana efficiency is poor and you are almost entirely dependent on using a wand at this level.

Regarding 11-20, having to sink 5 talent points off the rip into instant Corruption feels bad and also delays getting the improved Voidwalker taunt, which is needed. You can and will rip threat from him with just DoTs and wand, though this was always somewhat of an issue in various versions. Cheap respec wasn’t in the game yet when I was at this point, so I did not experiment with delaying taking instant Corruption. I felt like in general, I had to jump around between zones to avoid indoor combat as much as possible, but a lot of this was due more to the hyper-spawning enemies and the ever-present risk of being trained on by other players. On live, I will probably try to work the Dwarf/Gnome starting areas into my quest process as well because focusing yellow mobs/quests felt too dangerous at times compared to what I remember in other versions.

At 20 itself, certain zones in that range like Redridge feel very overcrowded, at least on PvE. I hope that this isn’t a preview of how it will look at 60 once the full release hits.

On professions, I don’t want to overplay or spoil too much in this space as it’s one of my main interests in other flavors of WoW, but I am thankful they opted to not use the modern/retail crafting system. My one concern is that I feel based on my leveling experience with the warlock that I am strongly, perhaps too strongly encouraged to take Tailoring and Enchanting. Shoot is the primary DPS “ability” at the lower levels it seems, so wand crafting feels essential. Tailoring gives BoP blues as well as provides Spell Power early on in other slots while also being the de facto gathering profession for Enchanting. Bags also did not seem to be dropping as often as I remember in the starting areas, and experienced WoW players know the importance of picking up everything to vendor for training early on. This means I have to also level another character to have access to gathering for the purpose of paying for mounts and raid consumables later on.

On leveling pacing, the game is very obviously closer to Era than retail or even SoD. This is expected, however raids opening roughly one month after launch seems rushed. This does not allow players much time to get to 60, obtain decent gear from Strat/Scholo/BRS etc. while potentially also leveling a second (and possibly even third) character just to pay the bills. For reference, I started leveling on Tuesday and finished last night (Friday), so roughly 3-4 days to get to 20. I expect that leveling will dramatically slow down in the 20s and 30s as it historically has in past versions of WoW, which is where concerns about the one-month leveling window come from.

On performance, the 9/24 update seems to have greatly improved the FPS issues that previously would occur after spending time in a city. Some latency and disconnects seem to have been introduced, but these were relatively infrequent and impacted mostly Friday morning’s session. Overall, I encountered very few quests that outright were bugged or did not function as expected, although as previously mentioned, some areas and/or objectives get overrun with players or are respawning too quickly to be handled by a single player. The mini-map now seems to have some texture issues as well, primarily in Stormwind.

Otherwise, I hope to see improvements and positive changes continue to roll out so that we can have an issue-free launch or as close as possible to it.

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I’ll agree with some of this. Levels 6-10 were painful and required healing and drinking almost every pull. Once the VW comes online things got much better and once drains and life tap become available the need for drinking diminishes and I was pulling aggro off the VW far less often.

I obviously don’t use wands as often as you do, but that’s a playstyle difference. I also went for insta-corruption later than you did since getting it down to 1.2 second cast time seemed sufficient.

My main annoyance with the class, so far, is soul shards not stacking. It’s just a nuisance to have to delete them one at a time.

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I ignored instant corruption entirely. I opted for 5 points in the “reduces threat and increases hit” talent, because missing with your spells feels bad. Then I went 5 points into increasing my pet damage across the board by 10%. My last point I went into improved voidwalker.

Next I will close that out and get the talent that heals my pet for 15% of the damage I do and probably the one that gives my pet mana back when I life tap.

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I’ve only played affliction so far but it’s my favorite way to level. Insta corruption is a must for me. 2 dots and a wand was enough to pull threat but I’m used to it. I do think it held threat better than I remember though. Imp is completely useless its damage is way worse than classic. Succubus is great, its auto attacks did about as much damage as one of my dots. Lash of pain does terrible damage though.

Shadowbolt is not worth casting at all, but that’s a bigger problem with how all spells have changed. But that was also the efficient way to level in classic, just dot and wand to eliminate downtime as much as possible. I never stopped to eat or drink once in forever all the way to 20. I think I cast life tap under 10 times, it’s insanely easy to level. The 2 mana talents in affliction are completely unnecessary when you don’t cast a filler spell. I’m usually top dps in dungeons with multidotting and wand and succubus, but I haven’t seen what it’s like now with the wand nerfs that went out. Leveling might be a lot harder with that too.

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In a less crowded map like Darkshore, I didn’t seem to be having as much of an issue, whereas the human starting areas were pretty rough with getting swarmed by hyper-spawns. I’m leveling a hunter now, and the difference up to level 11 or so at least is night-and-day as far as difficulty. It feels like I’ve switched to “easy” mode, and the pace of leveling is much faster as well, so it may very well be partly due to the spell-power changes. That’s also why I’m concerned about Tailoring being a “need” profession while leveling since I’d rather run Alchemy on a main. We’ll see how the game shapes up closer to launch, I guess.

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No soul well.

No summoning closet (I get it, it’d be too much).

No stacking shards.

Something needs to give here. This was horrible in OG vanilla. Soul well alone would make this so much less horrible.

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To be fair, I’ve dealt with this so long in SoD that I’m just used to it. If summoning closet isn’t a thing though, that’s a whole separate issue because I feel like covering that many shards might be a problem. We also had 30 slot bags in SoD, and based on what I’m seeing so far from Forever, its likely those won’t be available any time soon, if ever.

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I always chose tailor/enchanting in classic too but yeah I’d say it’s way more important to do that in forever. Although we don’t know what the crafted gear is like at endgame, maybe it won’t be as necessary at endgame. For leveling though it can provide so much power with the gear you can craft.

But yeah I’m really not a fan of the spellpower changes I think it’s all negatives.

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All caster classes are much more painful to level than the physical based ones thanks to the spell damage nerfs. It’s a real balancing issue they need to sort out. We don’t start out with a bunch of spell power on our gear, so why did they nerf lower ranks of spells?

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Soul well would mean you’d have to alter encounters to compensate for everyone having it. Closet changes world design. Etc.

Think retail. Everyone having a shield, defensive, heals, dps cooldowns, etc - means encounters are altered because everyone has these things and it becomes the default to force players to push those buttons because you’ve homogenized classes so much that everyone has them.

Tank/healer and that’s all who get a healthstone or summon. This means encounters are made to test the prepared and hurt the unprepared.

Same with mages. Tanks and healers get some food/water.

If everyone is expected to have a button then encounters will be made to force players to push those buttons. If not, encounters will be made to test group preparation and coordination.

It’s not about QoL it’s about game design 101. Sadly, basic game design left retail a long time ago.

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Soul shards filling every bag isn’t journey, it’s bad game design. Soul shards need to stack, at the least.

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Yea just comparing the warlock side-by-side to the hunter, something seems off. It’s still possible to level with minimal downtime, but the only way to accomplish that is by not using Shadow Bolt which in theory should be the filler spell. This was an issue originally as well though, so I don’t think they’ll change it, but I’m not sure why they felt a numbers pass was needed especially when players just leveling straight 1-60 aren’t going to be getting a lot of spell power gear from quests and such. Not like they are now from dungeons and the 20 cap at least.

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