Newb Warlock questions

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

I came back after a long layoff halfway through Legion and for the first time ever I rolled a Warlock. LOVED it.

In Vanilla I was a survival hunter, still my top in game experience.

  • Pets
  • Ranged
  • Brought the pain
  • Good survivability
  • Great solo play

In MOP I played UHDK for the first time. Very fun as well.

  • Pets
  • Good survivability
  • Brought the pain
  • Range and melee
  • Great class lore
  • DOTs
  • Decent solo

Afflock in Legion was really good, second best experience in WoW, best times since Vanilla.

  • Pets
  • DOTs
  • Brought the pain
  • Great class lore
  • Ranged
  • Solo world bosses
  • Virtually indestructable

I am pretty set on rerolling my Nelf Survival hunter because it’s the greatest thing Blizz ever designed, but I really want a Warlock alt as well. I love the tankiness and the DOT damage and the range and the pets…

So, given that I like the Lock playstyle but am a newb when it comes to Classic Locks, what can I expect? Should also note that I don’t care about raiding and any “serious” end game shenanigans.

Thanks in advance.

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2

Vanilla warlock is similar in some regards to this experience. But the way specs worked didn’t lock you into one school of magic or another. For example, I used to prefer Siphon Life/Ruin spec because in emphasized both shadow dots, and nukes. It was great for an offensive pvp build, but had less durability than a Soul Link/Ruin spec would have had. Bur our spell books would have been similar. Both warlocks would have had mostly the same utility. Soul Link would have had stronger demons, but Siphon Life has stronger dots.

Good luck. I’ll be playing horde, so maybe we’ll end up battling it out. I think survival hunters are tough to beat.

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3

Very strong leveling/solo

Dots

Pets

Class lore

Ranged

Solo things many can’t, including some higher instances (Dire Maul east demons for felcloth)… but no where close to a raid boss, and likely not many 50+ dungeon bosses (Princesss mara runs are doable, which are like 48-50ish elites… and I THINK a few in BRD might be managable)

As for your personal destructibility… it depends on your spec, really… Locks have a ton of viable builds for pvp and lower level content (where optimization matters less)… As you get more serious into PvE, however, you more or less narrow down to two builds (Shadow Mastery /Ruin and Demonic Sacrifice/Ruin) and 95% of your PvE consists of 1) Apply assigned curse 2) Shadowbolt until it dies, lifetapping as needed.

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4

Soul shards are the unique Warlock mechanic. They’re annoying, but so long as you craft the items they are used for before you log out you won’t have too many problems. Warlocks are second only to hunters in terms of raw solo capability and leveling speed (Druids can be argued to be as fast as them due to the early movement speed bonus), and are great at farming, especially with +Shadow gear.

Hunters are more mobile, Warlocks can be considered the walking tanks in terms of PvP/solo.

5

This is actually backwards…

The shards themselves, persist through logouts, and remain dormant in your inventory until consumed or manually deleted. The items created from shards (healthstone, soulstone, spellstone, firestone) are considered “conjured” items and will vanish between gaming sessions.

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Am I wrong? I didn’t play one, I just honestly thought that’s how it worked. My bad, then. That makes it even better since you can just hold on to the shards.

7

No worries, it’s never something really explained well in game, and it can get a bit confusing since the items created from shards (again, Healthstone/soulstone/firestone/spellstone) all do vanish between sessions.

8

Didn’t shards disappear after 15 minutes? The way I remember it, you could logout to get something from a bank alt, but anything more than that and you probably lose the shards. I also believe this rule applied to the stones in your inventory. Often, before I logged out, I would give random people health stones so as not to waste the shards.

9

Should have asked earlier; what are the top PvP specs for Classic Warlocks? And how do they play?

10

Wouldn’t advise you play warlock then. While they have a phenomenal kit to work with, the hunter seems more like your style. Undergeared warlocks are incredibly easy to dumpster, even in SL.

11

I think it was that way early on, but after tons of complaints, shard were made to persist. Locks had to farm so many shards before raids lol.

12

The way I saw it was:

  • Siphon Life/Ruin (My favorite spec, instant dots allow greater mobility and still have good shadow bolt damage when nuking)
  • Soul Link/Ruin (More demon utility at expense of Curse of Exhaustion/Instant Corruption)
  • Conflagrate/Nightfall (I consider this harder to gear up for, since fire didn’t scale as well as shadow. Lots of nuke damage, but less dots.)

There was more to it than that, but most builds followed some variation of those points.

13

Not that I ever remember in vanilla, no. It was rather important for me, since I had to do all my shard farming the night before a raid, since I got out of work with ~45-1hr before my raid, and my commute took anywhere from 11minutes to 1.5 hours to travel the roughly 3 miles… I’d literally log on and get summoned to the raid to help summon people myself many days.

SM/Ruin… Hybrid Dot/Nuke build… Pretty damn great at both individually. Potentially the single strongest build in the history of the game. Susceptible to shadow lockouts and tendency to be glass cannon. Also one of the two top PvE builds, so it’s extremely common for raiders that also pvp.

NF/Conflag… same as above, loses a bit of bite on Sbolt/Sburn, dot power, and utility for Conflag. Basically a slightly more consistent, mobile, nuke oriented version of SM/Ruin. Also mixes fire and Shadow, so getting locked out hurts it less… Probably my favorite build overall for pvp… I typically swap to this once content is on farm and I can afford to lose 10% on sbolt in PvE. Also glass cannon

Deep Destro:
You give up basically all but basic dot power to maximize direct damage potential, and boost personal survivability… Tankier than NF/Conflag and loses range on curses + nightfall procs (instant shadow bolt procs off corruption dot ticks)… Typically utilizes maxxed Searing pain talent, and usually prioritizes fire based attacks.

SM/DS: Depends on what pet you sacrifice (VW for health regen, Succubus for an additional 15% shadow damage on top of your 10% from shadow mastery)… VW sac gives you basically unlimited mana (via constantly regenerating health, which you lifetap for mana)… I’d sac a VW in AV zerg fights to never stop tab-dotting things, for example… Succy sac with this build provides some absolutely absurd scaling at end game and you will be able to 100-0 people with just corruption/agony/siphon life if they aren’t healed or dispelled, assuming decent gear… Both variants just tab dot things and either searing pain or drain life spam as a filler.

Soul Link/Nightfall: Take the playstyle of SM/DS… give it a pet, near immunity to casters, and 4x the health at the cost of most of it’s damage output. It’s the best “dueling build” and you basically just stand around dotting things and being incredibly obnoxious to kill.

Soul Link/ Shadow burn: The standard Soul link pvp build. Plays kind of like a short ranged version of SM/Ruin with no gimmicks. You don’t get the big ruin bolts, you don’t get the instant nightfall procs, you don’t get either range talent, you don’t siphon life, and you don’t get curse of exhaustion… What you do get is a near immunity to casters, a fairly stupid amount of effective health and a whole lot of consistency. SM/Ruin is higher risk/reward where you can swing for home runs… Soul Link /Shadow burn is like a guaranteed double.

For actual talent breakdowns:

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14

Wow dude, thank you! Just what I was looking for.

15

I’m a little confused by this. Soul shards won’t disappear when you logoff, but the items you craft with them will. So…you don’t want to craft items before you logout because they’ll be gone when you try to log back in.

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16

Correct. 10characters

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17

Soulshard the healer, use fear when needed and dps like crazy. Locks are one of the best moneymakers I’ve heard as well. Good choice for vanilla

18

Middle of the pack I’d say… Locks can do a few things others can’t, like solo farming eye of shadow, felcloth farming in DM:E… But druids/rogues are better gatherers, hunters are better instance soloers (since they can solo DM:Tribute), Mages can do better aoe grinds (ZG and BRD), and I think Rogue-BRD pickpocket farming is faster/more efficient as well.

One of lock’s best specific farms is Dire Maul Lashers, something that mages, Priests, and elemental shamans can also solo.

19

You mentioned mages aoeing in BRD. I had heard that by the end of Vanilla Blizz had added mobs that rooted you so you couldn’t aoe those packs anymore. No idea if that’s true or not though.

20

Could have been, my highest mage in vanilla was 40something, so my information on them is mostly 2nd hand/pserver reports (which themselves aren’t always entirely accurate).

I vaguely recall they did something to nerf ZG croc aoe farming as well… but don’t remember how/when that specifically happened, as it was never something I even attempted to try as a Warlock main/Rogue alt/Shaman garbage alt