For solo pve?
Warlock.
Both are S tier throughout TBC, but Locks edge out.
I see a lot of hunters all over, not that I mind but am curious why I see more hunters than warlocks.
Unless you’re rolling affliction lock hunter is better.
Feign death, tanky pet, HoT pet heal etc. They can solo hard. Also less mana intensive for just walking around killing random junk.
Debatable. I got no problems solo grinding as a lock, the only things that really give me trouble are fire elementals but its not impossible. Mana is a non issue for a warlock too, the only spec that remotely comes close to being mana thirsty is DS/Destro and all you have to do to fix that is sac a voidwalker or felhunter for their regen buff.
Imo Hunters are the worse pick because you have to spend time leveling a pet if you change it out, and you have to constantly buy arrows/bullets.
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Feign Death lets a Hunter do every 30 seconds something a Warlock can only do once every 30 minutes.
Siphon Life > Corruption > Curse of Agony lets a Warlock handle multiple mobs (for farming/grinding purposes) better than a Hunter. Hunters are better able to brute force down a single mob more effectively than Warlocks.
Pet management is more of an issue for Hunters. Demons (not) tanking mobs are less of a concern for a Warlock, but a Hunter pet that isn’t tanking mobs is going to be a major decrease in killing efficiency.
Warlocks don’t need to keep their Demons fed/happy. It’s not a major thing for Hunters, but it does require more consideration.
It’s a real toss-up – both classes are very fun to play solo.
Once again debatable. Things are often dead in two incinerates or an incinerate,immo,conflag combo. Willing to bet if you looked at it under a microscope it would be about the same amount of GCDs to do it.
I agree with everything else though.
Hunter - they play very similarly, they share a lot in common both being pet classes.
But that said, all other things being more or less equal, mail > cloth for armor and does make a different in how survivable they are.
For solo PvE I would have to say feign death is what decides it. They are pretty much equal in most aspects but with FD you literally cheat death as often as every 30 sec. You can attempt to take on a lot of different scenarios or squeeze into dangerous areas knowing you can always FD if things go sour. If they had ever taken it outta the game I wouldn’t feel bad because I’ve always considered it sort of broken.
Good luck
FD is a cool button but if you need to hit it every 30 seconds you are doing something wrong.
And just to add one more thing about FD. It also helps a ton when you want to mine or herb a node without being messed with by a mob. Ice trap. Mine/herb. FD. Walk away without engaging the mob. It may not sound like much but sometimes you just want to get those nodes and not mess with killing the mob around it.
For leveling? Probably Hunter. You don’t need to spend much mana and you’ve got Feign Death as a failsafe.
For max level? Warlock by a mile.
What ends up happening is that your personal dps rapidly out-paces your pet. A max level Hunter almost instantaneously pulls threat off their pet, which leaves them in melee range with mobs unless they take a long, long time for that pet to build threat.
The same thing happens with a Warlock. However, there are two key differences. The first is that Warlocks don’t shut down the moment something comes within melee range. The second is that Warlocks don’t need the pet.
As a result, even Destro Warlocks (who aren’t particularly good at farming) do a lot better than Hunters solo. The more heavily you move into Affliction, Warlocks become almost unmatched at solo’ing level appropriate mobs.
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For solo pve? You mean like questing and the like?
Hunter, probably. Send pet in on a target and afk. You also have a threat drop for spicy moments.
botters and s***ters mostly, its an easier class, although a good hunter is 10x more useful than a bad one.
I have a 70 of both. I prefer the hunter. I have more mana issues with my lock. Annoying having to lifetap all the time. Then my felguard needs healed and that is taking away dps while I heal him.
Hunter I use misdirect/multishot to get aggro to pet. I dps pets initial target while pet gets aggro, and send pet to the next target while I burn down the initial one, that way pet almost always has aggro, until the end in which case I can burn it down before it gets to me. Heal is passive, so that’s a plus, and as others have mentioned you have FD for those whoops times.
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I’ve mained warlocks before and tried to level hunters (one to about 40 and one from 59 to 65ish). I’ve always really enjoyed playing an affliction lock but have found hunter to be one of the most boring classes to level. It just feels so much less interactive than lock.
I lvled both 1 to 70 with mostly questing, and they are both top of the list for lvling for sure. There are some differences though:
1- You often need to sit down and drink with hunter after killing something. it gets better with aspect of viper at 64, but you still need to sit down once in a while. With warlock 1-70 I never sat down to drink not even a single time. I lvled affli and you basically turn health into mana and mana into health and damage the mob in the process.
2- With Hunter you can solo most of group Qs, while with lock You can mostly solo the ones you can fear.
3- You gotta buy and carry arrows and feed the pet for Hunters while with lock you only need shards.
4- aspect of cheetah is awesome before 30 for Hunters
5- if you play affli lock the right way, both your mana and health should always be bellow 60,50% or even less. That makes you an easy target for gankers
Overall, because there is literally no down time for affli locks, I think lvling a lock is slightly, but only slightly, faster than a hunter.
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I have to agree with just about all you said.
Leveling a warlock as affliction is nutty. Dot dot dot, tab target, dot dot dot, tab target, dot dot dot, tab target.
In phase 1 affliction gear I can go to the elemental plateau or the throne of kil jaden and juggle 4-5 L70 fire elementals at the same time and finish them while still sitting at 60-70% HP and mana. And I also solo’d the majority of group quests in Outland because all the big elites (with 1 or 2 exceptions) are kiteable via curse of exhaustion.
And truth be told grinding mobs solo as DS/Destro is really good too. While not as efficient as affliction/DS I can sac the VW for HP regen and kill any nonelite L70 mob in 3-4 seconds and only using ~10-15% of my mana. Factor in life tap and the VW HP regen buff and I can easily kill 15 or more mobs before having to sit and drink. It’s not as efficient as affliction/DS but tbh it’s not bad.
I don’t think you can make a wrong choice in this scenario, Hunter or warlock. Both are amazing dps, both are amazing solo grinders, and both will be really good at both for the next few expansions.
I have both and prefer the lock for solo PVE, although my hunter is not that geared so I’m sure that’s part of it.
I’ll agree that feign death gives hunters a leg up and if we are talking about node farming I’d give that to hunters with their pets + traps + FD. There’s a reason why so many hunter node farmers exist out there. They are very, very good at node farming.
Hunter was better in TBC content for doing group quests at level so I agree with that comment too. So if you want to try to do every quest possible when leveling hunters are a good choice.
As for PVE farming and dailies and stuff I go out with my lock PVP SL/SL spec and PVP gear and I’ve managed to survive a lot of near-deaths with siphon life, drain life and even using this in conjunction with life tap in addition to the pet. Then there’s the healthstone and soul stone. It’s crazy survivable. You’ve also got fear for situations which I don’t know if anyone mentioned with fearing elite mobs although in TBC a lot of that was fixed compared to Classic, but situationally fear is really strong too. As already mentioned banish is also good considering the amount of demons and elementals in TBC.
Ganking was not mentioned as this is a PVE discussion but there is nothing more fun than being at 20% health and 10% mana and someone tries to kill you and you still kill them. I have not been able to replicate this on my hunter.
Go lock, way too many meta chasing hunters around… plus groups always want locks either for seed on aoe packs, or banishes for mags/aran etc