Leveling a warlock ATM. Should I be prioritizing shadow/spell damage on gear over int/stam? And if so to what extent.
Yes. Shadow damage gear is your go to right now. At higher levels hit and crit depending on your build.
Stam and int are defensive stats basically. Having more of them means you can go longer and take more damage before you have to stop and drink. They don’t do much for your damage though.
Spellpower (and shadow spellpower) are purely offensive stats. That’s the best offensive stat, though. At level 60 even 1% crit is only worth about 12 spellpower.
The only wrinkle is drain life, which scales with spellpower.
TL;DR - both are good, but prioritize spellpower.
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Level affliction, your stat priorities:
Spell/Shadow damage >> Stam > Int > Spirit
Up until raiding, then you’ll start to need hit. Dots don’t crit so you really only need crit for stuff like shadowbolt. That will become much more important as you do a spec like DS/Ruin for raiding.
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And if you go with a drain spec you win’t even need to do that.
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If you don’t occasionally have to stop, you should be pulling harder.
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We don’t know what level OP is.
I’m still in SM/DS mode where extra HP means extra HP5 from fel stamina. It’s pretty awesome for grinding. Of course you need to at least have SL/DS to pull it off (lvl55), but when you do it’s glorious.
Even for an SM/Ruin lock, 80% of your damage is still coming from shadowbolt, so crit and hit are still vital.
Most warlocks should be going DS/Ruin and avoiding corruption, though, so it’s a moot point.
If you play on an active pvp server stamina is your main stat followed by spell power.
Pve server spell power then stamina.
Most spell power gear is pretty lacking in other stats as you level. You’ll kill mobs fast and your healing from drain life/siphon life scale well with it, but you will get destroyed in pvp by any burst class if they get the jump on you. If your warlock is horde you wont have to deal with wotf, so maybe it wont be as bad.
I carried a set of both. Stamina/int gear for busy contested zones and spell power gear for dungeon groups and quite zones.
I’d say to the extent of one being an obvious upgrade.
Sure you’ll want to prioritize spell power over int or Stam, but don’t take the cape with 18 armor, 3 Stam and 6 spell power over the cape with 33 armor, 10 Stam, 12 spirit and 17 int.
Sure you’ll want to maximize your damage output, but health is important too, and warlocks are squishy.
Im currently leveling my 40 warlock and will gladly take an additional 80 health over an additional 2 DPS while killing gorillas in STV. My voidwalker usually holds aggro until the mob is around 50% HP, then my DoTs and wand just deal too much threat and I start to take some hits. Fear can’t be easily used when carefully pulling packs of humanoids and you end up just taking damage to your face. Assuming you don’t want to sacrifice your voidwalker for the shield, use your health stone that you’re saving for the PvP gank, or spend additional Mana using drain life, you’ll want that extra armor/Stam
Right now my Warlock (36) has cloth armor. Squishy? Yesterday I tried paper armor – it was better! My melee is like a flounder’s melee…I’m a fish out of water. You can knock me over with a feather – the feather takes less damage. I’ve tried tanking against my rubber ducky…but the duck keeps winning.
What level is my upgrade to Aluminum-Diamond-alloy armor? Until I get that upgrade, I choose spell power (or shadow spell) on gear.
When I solo (PVE) I use the VW, just so mobs aren’t hitting me. So far that’s working well for me. Maybe I’m copying hunter-style solo leveling, by letting my pet be the tank. But it works for hunters, the fastest solo-leveling class in the game. It works for me.
switch to the succubus, it’s stronger
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Spell power is totally pointless until level 60. Focus on stamina, it benefits your health AND mana pool. I got my warlock to 60 in 6 days played with pure stamina and int gear. “Of the Eagle” is your bread and butter until 50+.
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yeah dont really waste time with shadow gear till late 40s, whale and eagle gear are your best bets
What? I’m guessing you’re not drain tanking with that build. If you focus purely on spell power, it doesn’t matter how big your health pool is as you’ll always be >90%…and mobs die way faster
I drain tanked with no problem at all starting at level 50ish but I didn’t even bother until then because I went deep Demonology first. I barely paid attention to my health or mana as I was leveling. I could pull indefinitely even with 10% health and mana. Warlock is incredibly strong and easy leveling class regardless of spec. Try thinking outside your internet/youtube cookie cutter guides. This is vanilla and a lot more play styles are viable in solo play than you’d think.
You really think you can’t drain-tank low level content without stacking the paltry amount of spell power that is available at those levels?
Er… there just isn’t very much spell power available until you get into the 50+ range.
So yeah grab whatever spell power you can you just won’t have much anyways.
Yea I know there’s lots of builds out there. I remember back in vanilla I thought demo was the way to go too. Then I realized how much easier and faster it is to level with as much sp as you can manage. You can’t kill anything any faster as you stack Stan/int.
Should grab the shadoweave legs and shoulders, they are sta/spellpower
Unless you are avoiding it for debuff slot reasons, why? Corruption is pretty much always a dps increase.
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In a raid, yes. We’re taking about leveling here. While leveling it should be mostly DOT and drain, you might lead with a Shadowbolt but that shouldn’t be the bulk of your damage.
I’d go for a drain tanking spec up until your high 50’s before I’d even consider going DS/Ruin, MS/Ruin, or SM/Ruin. At that point you might consider adding in some crit, even then spell power is still one of your highest priorities. The only higher priority is spell hit but you can’t get more than about 3% from gear, it just doesn’t exist right now.
They come close to equal priority on a PVP server, for sure. As you say, you’ll want a mix of both – stam to survive and spell power to kill before they can kill you. However, maintain two sets - one with high spell power for instances and one with higher stam for PVP.
Int is just a bad warlock stat overall until you raid. Your health pool is your mana pool so Stam is better for that and DOTs don’t crit so Int isn’t good for that. It’s not until you raid that you’ll need more Int and it’s still a secondary stat to spell power, hit, and pure crit.
Yep, if there is a debuff slot available then keeping Corruption up is a good use of cooldown. Especially if you can do it on multiple mobs. It’s decently low threat and adds a good amount of dps. However, if there are lots of locks and shadow priests you might want to prioritize who gets to put up debuffs.