I’ve been stuck in between two different classes for classic (Shadow Priest and Warlock) and I’ve been hoping you all could give me some help.
On one hand I want to play Shadow Priest as I’ve always loved priests but all the research that I’ve done says I have a 90% chance or higher of being pigeonholed into a healing spot which I do not want to do. Also it seems warlocks do higher DPS and have an easier time getting a raid spot.
My focuses are
Battlegrounds/World PvP - I want to be a PvP boss first and foremost.
Raiding - Specifically for gear. Idc about world firsts or top dps parses. I want to be an asset to my guild.
Dungeons - Got to get the gear.
Solo Capability
Given these priorities and the fact that I don’t want to heal would I have any success with a Shadow Priest or am I better off rolling Warlock for the first time?
You have to decide if it is worth it to suck it up and heal in raids to get that gear to melt faces.
Tanks and healers are in such high demand that you will have a very easy time getting geared if you can live with it. You also don’t need to be heal spec for early content.
Shadow priests are really strong at low level/gear pvp, but do not scale well enough to remain facemelters once people start getting into t2/3 gear.
Shadow priests also dont deal very good dps in raids and have major mana problems, so you’ll most likely be forced to respec and heal.
Warlocks are a little tougher early on but scale really well, and stay relevant in pvp at higher gear levels. They also have a much bigger bag of tricks and cool benefits to the class like your unique mount.
They stay strong enough through out the game to be solid PvP choice. Usually consdiered to be the kings of 1v1. However, the damage output of later weapons and Wars in general starts to make that much harder to deal with. Dedicated pocket healers as well. Still this is much closer to the end and there will be a long time you should be able to do quite well.
Most guild will have one shadow priest for warlock debuffs. Even then its a question as some may not take any but have a priest specced down to the debuff and apply it with SWP. Assuming you get the slot and your guild progress youll need to prepare far harder than other people to do middle of the road damage.
If you can afford water and your group isnt constantly pulling you can heal every instance solo outside of UBRS. Though healing/spirit gear set would be better than pure dps set.
Going to have to disagree a little on this…I plan playing shadow priest (have in the past) and did very well in all stages of classic pvp and did better dps than any hybrid in pve raids…I know i wont be in any high end hardcore guild being shadow dps however i dont have the time to be anyway…Also Pvp in later stages Mana burn is your friend against casters…and i wish all the luck to the melee classes against a good shadow priest.
If you run priest, and want to shadow you’ll be dropping coins a lot to respec. if you want to dps, do you really want to spend 5 hours raiding and playing whack a mole healing? This to get gear to do what you truly enjoy. If you want to play shadow priest, play it and find a guild that takes you as shadow.
Another aspect to consider, since you mention solo viability, is if you will be farming at any point. Priest will absolutely blow for AoE farming while Lock will excel. Holy Nova may be okay but it’s a huge mana drain to damage sink.
Oooo, they are both awesome. Its so upsetting in a bg when u are dying and not even realizing why. Ur health gets to 10 percent and you see the dots. Warlock dots. With shadow priest, which i’m rolling, you look freakin awesome and kill people fast as ****. SWD is so satisfying i’m getting a ***** right now thinking aout it.
This is one of my biggest points of concern. I don’t want to have to respect multiple times a day to jump back and forth between heals and dps when my primary focus is dps. I’ve heard money is much harder to come by in Vanilla
SPriests can certainly melt faces. Specifically, one face before going OOM. SPriest is the most Mana hungry spec in the game, and they have very limited ways to fix that.
You can certainly kill quickly, but I hope you have a hundred Mana Pots and drinks. Unless you run Locks with someone rocking Nightfall, you may struggle to get a spot as Shadow, but it is possible.
Locks, on the other hand, technically have infinite mana, pets can provide utility, and there’s a number of specs that are effective in PvP and PvE, although on the PvE side, hope you like Shadow Bolt: you’ll be casting that a whole lot.
They also have the edge in leveling: Locks can have their own personal tanks as they AoE things down, without having to stop to drink to restore Mana. Drain Life can keep you going after Life Taps.
It’s ultimately up to you, but you can really rock it either way. Whatever you enjoy more.
Farming shards can get aggravating, and pretty much fill your (small) bags if you raid. Some raid groups aren’t willing to let you collect final kills on trash to replace shards.
Soul stones , summons, cookies, you will be making and trading off that stuff a lot of the time.
Want to be a vanilla pvp god, try rogue. (Then farm mats for poisions, powders, thistle leaf tea, etc.)
Best advice I can give you is make a RPG toon you can relate to instead of trying to meta game it. If you love what you are playing, you can make a way for it to work.
It needs to be about the journey and writing Your Story, not a race to some non extant finish line. JMHO
This is also how I remember it. I started leveling as Holy because my guild needed a healer but switched to Shadow because leveling was soooo slooowww. I melted faces as an SPriest, including the faces of many a Warlock.
There were not a lot of Priests in Vanilla, heal or otherwise. I specifically remember that Priests only made up 6% of the population. There used to be a site called WoW Population. I remember looking at it and not at all being shocked that Warriors and Rogues made up a large percentage of players, they were second to paladins and mages who were the majority.
I think it’s always best to ask someone who played a Warlock and someone who played a Priest
I did play both so I can tell you they aren’t perfect classes.
Warlock farming shards is most annoying **** in the world. They start very weak, if you can get T3 they get really strong. Melee will wreck you 100% of the time in pvp, you have no way to deal with fear immunity or trinkets. It’s death sentence for any warlock.
Shadow priest is opposite, they are great vs melee (because shields make warriors rage starved), but you’ll have hard time killing competent casters. And one viper sting from hunter will make you go OOM, you won’t have enough mana to finish the fight.
As far as PVE, everyone needs a healer. Warlocks and rogues are dime a dozen in classic.
If you really want to rule PVP, those aren’t classes for that. Rogue, Warrior, Shaman, (and Mage) all scale best for pvp to a point where you can rock everyone.
The thing about Classic is that each had it’s own strengths and weaknesses. What one class didn’t bring to the table another one would. When I was leveling my Warrior which was my very first character, I used to think that mages were so much stronger than me. That was until I actually grouped with one and saw how quickly NPC’s melted them.
The thing about Priests is that they seemed to aggro everything! Casting a heal on a tank could aggro a mob. I remember pulling a mob by buffing my group as a Shadow Priest.
Paladins were awesome because they had a choice of aura, an Aoe that stuck to the floor while they dps’d and a shield.
Rogues were incredibly powerful because just as they do in retail, could stun for the full health pool. Feral druids in my opinion were the strongest dps class but then someone else may chime in and say the Warlock was better.
The classes were more about play style and what it brought to your group. There was very little solo play in Vanilla. Very little beyond level 40 was soloable.