S Priest vs Warlock

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

I have narrowed down my Classic main to either a Priest or Warlock. I played an UD Rogue in Vanilla, so either would be new to me (wasn’t till WotLK when I leveled both to max). I know the pros and cons of each class, but I have one question. At what point do S Priests do comparable DPS to a Warlock? I have heard S Priests scale crazy hard and late game they are excellent. I suppose I am curious as to what point in time they become a “respectable” DPS (if it’s around AQ or BWL, etc.).

2

Shadow priest. Because fear and mind flay. And mind control. And mind vision.

Warlocks are boring. They should be renamed to “borelock.”

And don’t worry about what other people think. Do what you like to do. You don’t need approval from everyone around you.

1 Like
3

Are you talking about pvp or pve? Because it’s day and night when you’re talking about shadow priest .

4

SPriests scale crazy… poorly. Their coefficients on spells are pretty atrocious, so they get left behind. Naxx geared vs bis pre-raid is only about a 100 dps gain (not counting mana longevity). They melt faces in pvp though, just don’t expect to top damage meters in pve.

5

u only bring 1 spriest per raid :confused: but they are great in pvp

6

Any decent guild will have 1 shadow priest per raid max. There can be 3-4 locks per raid or more.

In fact the only reason to bring 1 shadow priest is to buff the locks with shadow weaving. If the guild is good they might not even let you talent down to shadow form. Instead you would go 31/0/20 to get PI with shadow weaving purely to support the raid.

The main benefit of a priest is having a healing career in your back pocket. Otherwise it would be more difficult getting a spriest raid spot than a hunter raid spot, which says a lot.

Locks will always be valuable in PVP and PVE. Shadow priests are only valuable in PVP.

7

At no point will a spriest be on par with a warlock’s dmg in a raid, but they can do well if geared and played well. They aren’t in raid for their personal damage.

I plan on playing a warlock in a raid centric guild. I love em.

8

Thanks for the replies. I was pretty sold on playing a Warlock, but the ability to heal if necessary did make me consider a S Priest. Most of what I have heard about them must have been in the context of PvP. While I plan to do BGs, I’m not overly concerned with being a “god”.

9

Warlocks are absurdly easy to level via the Voidwalker.

So make BOTH!

PS–A Paladin/Priest/Warlock only (mostly only?) would need a Shadow Priest anyway for Shadow Weaving. Regularly stacked raids will still need an SPriest also for the same reason.

10

Priest if you don’t mind healing as they are always in demand. Warlock if you refuse to play as anything besides DPS.

11

Warlock because…

  1. They do more damage.
  2. They are easier to get a raid spot with.
  3. Nobody nags you to heal.
  4. They have cool pets.
  5. They own Shadow Priests.
12

Shadow priest will basically never compare in raids to a warlock. Their main purpose for being taken to a raid is to apply shadow weaving FOR the warlocks. Their main problem though isn’t actually lack of damage. It’s lack of mana. They run out constantly. Vs a warlock, which has a bottomless mana pool, a shadow must slurp down as many major mana pots and eat as many dark runes as possible. Assuming you’re willing to waste a fortune doing this vs the warlocks which don’t need to at all; you’re also tying up your potion CD. This becomes a problem on any fight where you need to potion HP/prot to survive. A good solution could be to get major rejuv pots, which restore hp+mana, but good luck finding someone with the recipe.

13

Warlock at 60 outshines spriest at pvp and pve, spriest has shorter range on nearly every spell except mindblast which means a warlock can simply just rotate CoT and CoE and the only thing the spriest will be able to do is shadow word pain you and mindblast which he won’t get off because he has CoT up most likely and you can just run out of range or spell lock it.

Shadow priests are actually quite awful in all aspects.

14

If you just want to PvP either is fine. If you want to raid as well a warlock would probably be safer. Unless you don’t mind sometimes (or always) healing.

15

They do dps comparable to a warlock as long as their mana pool holds out using a mix of shadow spells and smite. Warlocks will vastly outlast the priest. The real benefit a Spriest has is their passive healing doing upwards of 150% of their shadow dps to healing the group. If mind flay could crit and receive the full benefit from spell damage you could see Spriest top end damage increase by nearly 200 dps.

16

Spriests are basically the best duelists in the game with gear (at least r10 pvp set) but expecting to get “scaling gear” is unrealistic for a very long time. That gear goes to everyone else first. You have prio over moonkin and ele, that’s about it.

17

Vampiric Embrace + Improved Vampiric causes 30% of your shadow damage converted to healing for the party. Where are you getting 150%?

18

30% * 5 party members = 150% of damage done as healing