Hey, fresh 60 lock here. I’m really not digging Night Fae fairy stuff even though its tops for DPS, and Kyrian is what I play on my Paladin. I was really hoping to go Venthyr for my warlock since they seem the most “warlock like” and I like the armor/mount the best out of all of them.
Is there a chart that shows the DPS difference between all 4 covenants? I plan to mostly play Aff but if Demo gets buffed I may mess with that spec. I worry I’m going to pick a covenant based on current top DPS and then they’ll be nerfed later on and I’ll be stuck with one I don’t like and will have to switch.
Thanks
The Venthyr ability is a DPS loss to cast.
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The best covenant is Night Fae because of the soul bind trees. The class abilities from covenants are all very under tuned. On the bright side you can chose any of the 4 for lore reasons.
Night Fae, even it’s ability soul rot is a huge dps increase over the others, and it’s aoe…
Night Fae is best covenant at the moment.
I went necrolord and quickly switched to fae. I hate it, bit soul rot is by far best ability we get. I was planning on playing demo, but i just fell in love with MR. This is my first xpac im playing as affliction. I always played demo since WoD
The DPS different won’t matter unless you’re going for high end raiding/PvP. Play whatever you want, people aren’t going to stop you.
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Yeah, the Night Fae ability has a shorter cast time and has an AOE component. The ‘blink’ lets you choose a defensive instead of burning rush.
Having said that, I chose Necro and won’t change. Going back to my covenant base makes sense and feels familiar. This is an RPG. I’m playing a warlock. I’m sure the game will come to recognise it soon and this silly fairy lock or angel lock business will end.
The faelock and angellock make perfect sense in lore. You just try too hard to cut yourself on that warlock edge.
That being said as many have stated the choice doesn’t actually matter unless you want to run higher end raiding pvp or m+ and/or don’t like being lectured by people that insist on getting in your sh¹t.
Even venthyr is fine if you aren’t a mythic raider really.
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Nightfae is bis. However, kyrian gets a potency in first soulbind at renown 21 which would be this week. It’s an option if you truly do not want to play night fae.
The covenant tier list for Warlock is as follows:
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Night Fae
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Kyrian
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Necrolord
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Venthyr
Night Fae takes a far lead because it solves warlock’s mobility issue. I don’t think it will ever not be #1 for warlock. I can’t stomach the furriness tho.
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I’d love to have been a necro or venthyr lock, but Idk what issue people have with nightfae visuals it isn’t that bad honestly.
With that being said, literally 3/4 the game is nightfae, I expect to see that change with the next covenant tuning patch
To echo the sentiment further, I’ve found that depending on the fight/dungeon, I can sometimes even skip running Burning Rush and talent into Demon Skin because of NF.
I really don’t like how our mobility talent and a durability talent are on the same row, but Demon Skin definitely helps healers out when doing M+.
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Bloodmallet and Hero Damage both have sims for these. These sites are usually pretty decent with this kind of thing, and the info they have seems pretty in line with what I’ve seen elsewhere:
https://www.herodamage.com/warlock/soulbinds/1t-t26-affliction-kyrian
It’s a nontrivial difference between NF/Kyrian and Necrolord/Venthyr, but people can and do play other things. Especially if you’re something other than Aff (Necrolord is quite good for Demo and Destro).
Warlock should have Burning Rush baseline honestly.
7 Likes
Either that or an entire row dedicated to mobility.
Like Burning Rush vs Demonic Leap vs something that makes Demonic Circle and Gateway instant cast.
A lot of what’s in the talent tree should be baseline honestly. The whole talent system has been pretty awful overall. They scalped classes of their identity and refit a lot of what made them fun into the talent tree as a choice. Some classes felt empty for certain aspects of the game because of it.
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Ultimately you have to decide what’s more important to you: class fantasy, aesthetics, damage / utility.
If your priority at 60 is to eventually raid heroic / mythic and do high level keys, you really do have to pick Fae > Kyrian as your two choices, aesthetic and fantasy be damned. The others will just not perform well enough and with the current difficulty of even heroic content, you as a DPS will be a hard sell when raiders are picking their line-ups (unless you are in a casual guild that will bring you regardless).
If you plan to do high level arena, perhaps there is an argument, albeit a poor one, for necrolord. That said, a shield of any size saves you less damage than porting away even once from a melee with Fae ability.
If you want your class fantasy and aesthetics the by all means, pick Necrolord or Venthyr. They have their strengths in certain areas - Venthyr ability great for large group PvP such as epic battlegrounds or low level RBGs. The necrolord shield not terrible for PvP either.
I’d rather take burning rush baseline and devote that row to survivability. We’ve always been pitched as the beefy caster and I’d really enjoy feeling like that a but more again.
Night Fae is tops by a bit. wowhead has a chart of some raw power numbers, https://www.wowhead.com/guides/affliction-warlock-best-covenant-shadowlands
the best venthyr is still a couple hundred dps behind night fae. This doesnt take into account tons of things but still is a good display of how much better the others are.
non-dps wise I dont know what I would do without soulshape now. the mobility it offers us is incredible and once you play with it, I dont think I can play without it.
True. I miss Soul Link and when GrimSac gave hella HP. Now we only have a tiny bit of extra stamina.