Insert your opinions and veteran knowledge here please! I’m so interested to see, being that I don’t know much about Vanilla!
What role?
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PvP? Probably Demonology Warlock. They have great survivability and can counter most classes (especially 1v1).
PvE? You’ll probably receive more dungeon invites as a Warlock (Soulstone, summoning, and Healthstone). I believe Warlocks are usually preferred for the rare instances casters are required to tank (Twin Emperor). Mages are great for food, water, and teleports. I don’t remember which had greater DPS. Mages may have a higher burst (situational).
Generally, I prefer Warlocks (to play as).
Warlocks can summon a blueberry.
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You forgot a spammable CC in combat which is unique.
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This is true. Polymorph is nice, but Warlocks could also use Seduction and, if your group felt extra frisky, Fear haha. Frost Nova could also be highly useful at times. I guess Mages had a better AE setup (Rain of Fire had a high mana cost vs Blizzard and Arcane Explosion could be instant while running).
Mages are better in PvE raids… both ST and AoE
EDIT: and better at farming (via aoe) and dungeons (via a more useful cc)
Warlocks are typically less played, and easier to get groups on and gear overall (though a mage honestly shouldn’t have any problems in that area either). Lock will be substantially better at solo farming and leveling.
In PvP… I’d say warlocks are “S-Tier” while mages are merely “A-Tier”… You can’t really go wrong with either… but I will warn you, that the pvp movements/playstyles/instincts/timing on each are pretty substantially different and you may want to check out a number of videos to get a better idea of which you might prefer. Alternatively you can try and play both, but as a dedicated lock main, those aforementioned differences would drive me nuts, because my instincts and timing learned from playing a lock where always off when playing a mage…
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In PVP it’s a tossup in my opinion. Yes Lock has more survival but a good mage is going to either be able to POM nuke or mass cc depending on fire/frost. And trust me, that sheep is more powerful than you can imagine. Lock can get target fired a lot easier IMO lacking the oh sh*t button that mage inevitably has with ice block.
As for PVE, mages will be a dime a dozen and good locks will be valued a LOT more as it can be extremely tedious with summons. As for needing to tank, ya, maybe, in very short bursts. Twins was trivial past the first week or two of pulls, if you had trouble, for a good raiding guild. You’re there to soul stone, summon, and have middle of the road DPS spamming ONE curse and shadow bolt, for the most part.
thats the cool thing about classic, if both are evenly geared then it comes down to skill.
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They’re both good, they deal solid damage and bring good utility to raids, and you can usually get into raids as both, mages have decurse, food and water and can make a portal for the raid once its over, and locks bring some high dps with the right gear, a second health pot and a soulstone for tanks and healers they can also summon people which is good if say, someone accidentally forgets some consumables in there bank.
This is has been beaten to death. Mage is the top caster in vanilla in pve.
The reason is locks have no threat reduction talents and no soul shatter. You might be able to dps a little more on alliance side due to blessings.
Pvp different story.
Pvp shadow priest kicks both of their butts.
A geared warlock basically can’t lose to a shadow priest…as any of warlocks ~5 pvp specs.
Warlocks with pet and pre farmed shards and enough bag space and a capable healer can pretty much cast with no mana issues, just life tap, and let the healer top em back up while they spam on the dps.
I"ve played both mage and lock. I really liked aff lock for most things. Mage can be good, but OOM is a thing, sometimes a big thing. Burn / conserve and wand are pretty important to both with the 5 sec regen mana rule while wanding in conserve stages.
This is true that nukes can be useful, but Warlocks could have two different CCs going at the same time (Seduction + Fear) on different targets. Drain Mana could be effective in killing opponents as well as dispelling opponent’s buffs or removing magic effects from yourself and finding rogues or increasing stamina (in absence of PW:F). Curse of Tongues could be super useful. I feel like there are, generally, more applications for Warlocks than people perceive. That’s not to say Mages are bad at all, but… Warlocks were just so strong.
I would highly disagree with this statement - gear was the most influential factor in vanilla. Naturally, being talented could overcome gear, but even somewhat similarly talented persons with a decent gear disparity would lose hard. There was much more rock, paper, scissors in vanilla as well.
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A Warlock and a Mage should both dominate a SPriest if they know how to play. Only circumstance where this isn’t the case is where LoS can be readily abused, which isn’t many areas. To answer the OP: I’d say Mages are more useful in group content and the best solo WPvP class for handling 1v# situations. Warlocks are the best dueling class in the game.
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Well warlocks can do a cool mount quest and mages get portals.
Frost: Solid damage on its own and in low gear. Used in MC and BWL due to spell resists.
Fire: Pump damage into ignite. Threat and damage usually gets consolidated to one mage. Big damage but big resistances in early raids. Your dps is reliant on ignite.
Warlock: Curse slave. Does big independent dps. Has hit issues early on and can have threat issues later on. Healthstones are unique and you will often be asked to make them for the raid.
Mages are the more convenient pick especially on Alliance. They can AoE farm mobs for quick gold and will always have food/water available.
Mages have to manage mana a bit more on horde as they lack judgement of wisdom. Horde threat reduction is also only 20% in comparison to Alliance’s 30%. This means horde casters can suffer more threat problems.
Played Mage in vanilla up to Naxx (switched to Druid for healing then). Mages are top tier as everyone mentioned. Early on farming on a lock is way faster, once you get geared nothing beats mage aoe farm.
Mana being a thing was annoying as a mage, always looked on in envy as I had to wand and regen while locks just lifetapped (provided you had smart healers that did not oom). 1v1 pvp locks dominate mages too unless you get very lucky or outgear them.
That being said, mage was super fun and once geared was devastating. Top alliance premade would always have flag carrier carry a set of fire resist gear vs us, since me and the other mage could one shot anyone with trinket, pom pyro.
Both specs are pretty basic to play in raiding, xxxbolt spam (warlocks can’t go affliction in classic raids due to debuff limit)
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Turns out you actually agree with his statement then. Because he was saying if the gear is the SAME it comes down to skill. Not that skill beats out gear disparity