I couldn’t find anyone talking about this so I thought I’d post. I decided to give Dragonflight a try after Blizzard screwed the TBC fans by not giving us TBC era servers. I knew retail leveling was supposed to be easier than Classic, but by choosing warlock as my first character… well I almost quit the game because I could not stay awake while leveling. There was literally ZERO challenge levels 1-60, I could not die. No matter how many mobs you aggro just drain life and you’re indestructible. There seems to be no such thing as spell pushback in the game anymore or very little of it, so 20 mobs beating on you is no big deal as long as you drain life them one at a time.
Like I said, I almost didn’t make it through leveling, I was bored to tears. In fact as soon as I hit 60 and was able to unlock Chromie timewalking I dropped the warlock and leveled a rogue which was an infinitely better experience. Now I’ve gone back to the warlock finally in the new Dragon Isles zones and it seems I actually have to pay attention for once and warlock isn’t putting me to sleep anymore.
So it seems Blizzard has just massively screwed up scaling down warlock abilities for lower levels. Drain life is way too powerful, it literally makes you unkillable.
I get that the difficult part of retail is endgame and they intentionally made the leveling experience a lot easier… but they have obviously gone too far. I won’t be surprised if no one else cares but I really think this should be fixed. Like I said, going from TBC Classic to retail, I almost quit before finishing leveling my first character all because I chose warlock first.
1 Like
I stopped playing near the end of TBC and didn’t really return until close to the launch of SL, so I had missed most of the expansions.
I leveled my lock at the end of BFA and it was this super weird experience of sampling all the expansions for 10 or so levels each. It was a really bizarre and disjointed journey.
I don’t remember if it was difficult. That probably means it wasn’t. 
1 Like
I leveled in BFA and Legion content, as it didn’t give many options without having unlocked Chromie timewalking yet, and then on through Shadowlands content to 60. Having actual timewalking available for my rogue made the game much more enjoyable, but I’m fairly certain it wouldn’t have made my warlock any less indestructible and insufferably boring.
Yes, leveling as a concept is pretty obsolete. If you are looking for that core leveling experience, classic is one option. The other option is to perceive the start of endgame as “leveling.” It unfortunately just is no longer profitable for there to be depth in the pillar we’d consider traditional leveling. Give it a few more expansions and character level will be fully scrapped or reworked beyond just level squishes.
The new talent trees breathed some life and purpose back into core leveling, but it still has its issues.
Well like I said, I understand leveling is supposed to be super easy in retail. I’m just saying that leveling a warlock is actually unpleasant because it’s 60 levels of absolutely no challenge whatsoever. Even though there was nothing actually difficult with leveling my rogue, it was a completely different experience because I couldn’t constantly keep my health at 100% with the push of one button. I just think it doesn’t have to be this bad… I am being completely honest when I say I almost did not get through it, it was so incredibly boring. I was so close to just deciding retail wow is stupid and unplayable due to being so boring.
Try to level any class and any spec. All of them are like that when leveling. There’s zero challenge in leveling on retail WoW.
1 Like
I find when lvling a lock you dont die but boy things dont die either. For some odd reason i choose to lvl as a aff lock and i hate it everytime.