Let’s discuss warlocks please

A good hunter should give you a run for you money using Terrain and objects with LOS.

I remember when my Pom was on CD to give locks a wide berth as a mage. Locks with fel hunter dispel spam are mage killers. Absolutely nothing worse for a deep frost spec mage to have all your buffs eaten.

hrm. Onineko as in the Blackrock Onineko?!

Don’t worry I won’t ask you for a summon

I will just expect one.

Blackrock yes…pre oceanic servers they where the days…

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Server First Mu’ru if I recall… damn. First player I ever grouped with in 04 was a shaman named Torvo who was in Onineko. Good times, I remember him well.

I will summon you into the twisting nether, Paladin.

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Dude anyone who outgears can take on multiple players. I’ve seen geared warrior take out almost 10 players like a machine.

On equal terms it’s not the same game. As lock you can’t escape, you can be completely shut down by melee with interrupts, you are vulnerable to stuns, and your range is bad so hunter can 3 shot you from 40 yards. Too many vulnerabilities.

End game everyone’s damage is high, it’s a cc game which lock loses vs many classes.

Mage is superior to lock in pvp in every way.

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Warlocks do fine in BGs. They’re just more vulnerable to warriors/rogues and less bursty or mobile than Mages.
-Dot everyone in sight. More corruptions=more nightfall. More siphon=more health. Life tap it if nothing else.
-Vs teams heavy on physical, use a voidwalker for shields. If it’s heavy on casters/heals, use fel hunter. If you’re demo, you can instantly switch or pop a 2nd void for practically nothing.
-If you have sacrifice, you can use it with an inferno out, meaning you have the buff AND a pet. I loved dropping infernos into enemy groups. It’s like one big grenade, which then stomps around until someone deals with the thing.
-Always have fire ready for when your shadow tree is locked. Casting fire is better than nothing. If you’re lucky, you can bait bad players into wasting their counters on your fire tree, keeping your shadow open. Mages for example usually counterspell the first spell they can, so just open up with fire casts, then laugh after they lock it.
-If you’re the potion guzzling type, free action or invulnerable pots=your best friend. Don’t expect health pots to do much when you have a mortal strike on you.

That only matters if you’re going for Grand Marshall. If you don’t PvP, it is a license to troll!

You don’t need to escape, you can relentlessly tool just about everyone 1v1 as any of the ~5 pvp specs… and pretty typically dumpster most people even 1v2… Warlocks get pretty damn nutty after ~mid-late BWL.

Beyond that, if you’re ever getting attacked by more than 1-2 people, you need to work better on your own positioning, and likely play more defensively (though this is starting to turn into more of spec specific argument)…

The only area of pvp I’d say mages have a distinct advantage over warlocks in is the capability to stack them and aoe/dive bomb into groups. Warlocks burst WAY harder, have significantly more potent CC, significantly better survivability (spec permitting), significantly more build diversity, and significantly more playstyle diversity within each spec.

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My favorite was world PvP as a lock when someone would think they were going to get the jump on me while I was leveling. Would just have my succubus invisible and set to passive. The moment someone would jump me I would have her charm them, then fear them into mobs, dot them up, and run away as the mobs finish them off.

Good times.

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I’m casting Shadowbolt at you as we speak, and when it finishes next week you’re going to see just how right I am.

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I played just about every class, not all, but definitely all casters.

Best caster by far was mage, you have all your tools available, you have cc, you have escapes, you have damage, you have shields.

Warlock has none of that other than damage if your opponent isn’t ccing you or interrupting you. Vs noobs yeah easy class to play (but every class is easy when you outgear by 3 tiers), vs anyone with IQ above a rock warlock just get locked down completely, nothing you can do. And in group pvp where you get rushed, you have 0 survival tools like IceBlock and Blink out of **** to safety.

I like that class for PvE greatly, but for PvP they have major weaknesses that Mages do not. You can’t rely on DC, DC has a 2 minute cooldown, and works vs one opponent only. This is pvp, not a duel.

Shadow bolt is never hit capped.
In BIS Naxx gear you have 11% hit I think.
That leaves a 6% chance to miss on bosses.

LOL… Void sacrifice. Shield.
CC? Fear, Deathcoil.
Instant Summon Void (given spec) Shield again.
Interrupt. Felhound.
Dispel Mages’ Shield. Eat Magic.

Played a warlock did you? RiIIIIght.

3 ranks of healthstone in bags… Siphon Life, Tongues, Drain Life.
All this while you can be nuked down while CC’d by the lock.
If you poly, thanks for the heals…
Better run, I have 3 times your health.

let’s not forget about the wonderful Spell Stone should the spec demand it.

or, just seduce, elements, and wind up a shadow bolt, seduce again and rinse/repeat until dead. Yep. All those tools. Lock is useless.

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Any warlock with even bwl gear and a succubus can deal 2-6x your entire health bar in damage before you leave cc for longer than a global in a 1v1 right. Your opponent’s skill level, gear level, and their iq are all almost entirely irrelevant with that much damage potential and crowd control.

As far as the “being rushed” assertion, that’s kind of like letting a team in the nfl get the ball down near the goal line and then complaining about them putting up points via at least a field goal. You’ve already put yourself into a poor position if they are ever in a position to put multiple dps on you like that, you aren’t a front line fighter, and your mistake was already made. Learn how to position yourself properly, and the only things that ever touch you at all are rogues opening from stealth, hunters via having from 5 yards more range than you, or any casters 36-31 yards. 30 yard casters should literally never touch you unless you’re playing with a training wheels soul link spec, and no warrior should ever be in range to charge you without being put into combat, nor be allowed to close distance in combat for intercept without massively over extending.

Don’t blame the class for your own inability to effectively judge and maintain proper distances between you and your targets.

It’s important to note that warlocks and mages play incredibly differently in their usage of range during the vanilla era… I’d wager your experience as a mage was corrupting your time playing a warlock for the worse and causing you to make positioning mistakes. I know I found vanilla mage to be extremely clunky specifically because many of my instincts from being a warlock main where “wrong” when on a mage character. That’s not to say vanilla mage can’t be played well warlock like, standing at 36 yards hitting frost bolt over and over, but mage is actually optimal closing in to set up shatter combos and the like, and /or forcing cool down trades… Warlocks -never- really want to close the distance vs anything but a hunter if they can help it and it’s better to instead think each different range level (36, 30, 24, 20) opening up more and more skills kind of like presighted medieval siege lines of defense around a city… You never want a target being capable of surviving long enough to get to the walls.

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If you want to raid you have pick up Ruin/SM/DS which two you pick is up to you, but otherwise you’re burdening your raid. Otherwise you can pretty much pick whatever.

Thanks for the info. I have been watching all the YouTube warlock classic guides. Seems that’s just how it works. That one guide where that one streamer dude interviews apparently some uber 1337 warlock guy, they described the class as “volatile” where you can have a string of massive crits and then sometimes a string of repeated misses. Just how it works out for the class due to a lack of any +hit talents for destruction spells they said.

Appreciate everyone’s input! At this time I’ve decided to opt for a warlock over a hunter as first character at least. I understand there will be some annoyances but overall I don’t mind being lower on the dmg meter if I bring plenty of other goodies to raid. And there seems to be an endless amount of specs to play around with in other situations.

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You will need to put at least 3x as much time into them as you would leveling up any other class. They are very squishy and so died very quickly if surrounded by to many foes.

I played d Demo back then simply because I wanted the main demon as a pet.

For warlocks you needed to go on quests to get all of your minions and even for certain spells. To get your epic and no epic mount you needed long quests for that. If you wanted to summon people for a raid you had to sped at least a quarter of an hour getting all your soul shards ready and all that.

And you had one bag that could only hold your stones.

All your demons you had to go on quests to get and bring them back to Undercity and then fight them and learn them. It is in the warlock looking place. I had an undead warlock back then. Alliance could not have warlocks back then.

In classic mages weren’t all that great in PVP. Unless you could 1 shot someone with TOEP or ZHC, you didn’t last long. Warlocks absolutely dominated mages 1v1. Send in the felhunter and go make a sandwich while the mage can’t do anything. With soul link it didn’t matter if you couldn’t escape. You were a mini raid boss. And when you geared enough to not need soul link you could two shot people with shadow bolts as sm / ruin. Maybe in BC or WOTLK your points would stand, but definitely not in classic.

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The biggest mistake one can make is playing a Warlock like they are a Mage. That’s stupid, and you should never do it.

Your tool set is all kinds of different. First, you have your demon. They not only are some extra DPS, but they enter combat as well, so a rogue has more trouble doing their daze/sap/stealth combos to infinitely stunlock you. Your demon also has other abilities, as well. Succubus offers some CC, Felhunters are death to Mages, Voidwalkers are beefy boys, and even the lowly imp can get some good damage once Curse of Elements is on.

Second, you have those afflictions. Drain Life and Drain Mana in particular are a nasty combo, because you can use it to restore yourself while switching to Health Funnel or Mana Tap. Drain Mana is especially devastating against classes like Mages that literally rely entirely on MP. All the while, DoTs are ticking, and when you have all 16 debuff slots just for little old you, that is a LOT of DoTs. And the demon is still attacking.

Third, even if you decide to get in a slugging match with a mage, as I recall Destruction spells tend to hit harder than a mage’s spells, but they take more MP. Which doesn’t matter as much when you can eat your opponent’s MP between casts.

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