Warlock or Mage?

The crit bonus is what bumps it up to bis status, however.

I thought Mage vs Warlock of equal gear and skill, slightly favored the Lock.

This was soooo not my experience maining a warlock in Vanilla for a time and doing quite a bit of PvP. I actually did quite well in PvP on my warlock. I had an absolute blast.

I will admit that by 1.12 things changed making it a bit harder for warlocks regarding the fear nerfs you mentioned. But, I still did very good in bg’s, world PvP and duels at the end of Vanilla. I loved PvP in Vanilla and I had the most fun on my warlock than any class I have ever played in any game, big part of that due to how much fun I had playing it in PvP situations.

I will give you an example. We had a priest in our raiding guild that hated, absolutely hated warlocks. This priest stacked shadow resist so they could beat warlocks, or so he thought. They were constantly complaining in chat about how warlock’s were nothing without fear. FYI: Anyone that knows how to play a warlock well doesn’t need fear.

Anyways, the warlock class leader in our guild challenged the priest to a duel outside IF without using any type of fear, at all. No fear, no howl of terror, no death coil, etc. Our warlock class leader destroyed the shadow priest without using one single fear ability in that duel. The duel did go on for a few minutes, but the warlock won and by quite a bit. It was so fun to watch and of course, the priest was even more enraged lol.

So with my experience putting a good amount of time on a warlock in Vanilla and doing a fair amount of PvP on her, I really disagree with your post. I was very good at playing my lock back then. The playstyle seem to come to me naturally. A good lock can be amazing in PvP, even without fear.

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This reminds me of one of best duels I ever had in this game. A mage challenged me to a duel in STV in Vanilla. It was so fun. The player was very good at playing their class and I used to always enjoy a good duel against a skilled player. We dueled for a good while and then she accidentally jumped off the pier in Booty Bay while we were fighting lol.

She came back up and we continued. I beat her, but honestly just by a hair. We both laughed and bowed to each other. It was really a lot of fun and one of my most memorable duels because it was against someone who could play their class very well.

I don’t remember ever having issues with mages until at the very end of Vanilla or early in BC. It’s been so long now that I can’t remember honestly. But the only class that used to really give me issues on my warlock during Vanilla was hunters. I know many will say they should not have given me problems, but people play different I suppose. Rogues didn’t give me issues, (beat most of them), druids didn’t, mages didn’t, warriors didn’t, no class but hunters. And oh, a good shadow priest could give me a run for my money sometimes though.

But a friend of mine mained a hunter in Vanilla and we would duel a lot. I learned strategies and learned how to deal with hunters better.

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/walks in, dragging the vurtne video into yet another thread

hehe

Neither. Spriest. Go melt some faces. You’re welcome.

Mage is easier to enjoy. You can escape trouble, blow things up. Lock can’t, and must annoyingly farm shards.

Classic lock is too much work to be a halfarsed mage. Played all classes, wouldn’t play lock in classic.

Which has a higher skill ceiling / lower skill floor?

if you get all the stuff vurtne shows in the video i linked, the skill is just gauging when its best to use them. most vanilla classes have low skill ceiling for leveling, raiding and dungeoneering, and ramp up in diffculty for pvp.

i notice that good pvpers frequently fake cast to get a specific reaction from their opponent, and i’d say thats the hardest thing to master. everything else is just knowing your class really well and learning when to use your engi stuff and trinkets, charms, reflectors, etc.

I’m guessing that Warlocks will be less common, and therefore potentially easier to gear up?

You’re playing horde so there will be plenty of warlocks. They are less played on alliance side due will of the forsaken and tremor totem. Most raids are going to have 2 full caster groups split pretty evenly between warlock and mage.

If you like undead play undead. Personally I would play orc. Warlocks can’t trinket stun, but they can trinket fear and poly.

I can’t post links but there is a good post on the Baren’s chat forums called " Orc Warlock ‱ Min-maxing to 60 and beyond" that talks about this.

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I was average at best in pvp and never played a mage. Also it is rock, paper, scissors (RPS). But if you put these two up 1v1, Lock should win. It was my easiest kill easily where as the rogue beat me nearly every time solo. And yet the mage does well enough against the rogue. RPS.

Different styles and I probably will do a mage (or priest) this time around but I would not be messing with Locks if I don’t need to typically.

thats really a wiggly thing. on the one hand you have more locks on horde because orcs and undead are better pvp lock options vs. alliance locks.
on the other hand, that means more competiton for gear rolls in pve.
if you roll alliance lock, you’ll be not as good at pvp as horde, but rarer so gear rolls will be better

if you plan on horde, and insist on lock, i hear orc locks are great for pvp.

Thank you
 I will look into this!

Undead mage eng and mining from the start.

Don’t over complicate it.

Just my opinion. Focus is pvp. Pvp starts in your first contested zone right? So use your eng things asap.

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Meh - didn’t have a problem using fear and insta-dots to get rank 14 on lock. Mages are good fun though.

Mage is better in pvp, has more survivability, burst, and cc.

Lock does ok when they are in the back throwing out dots but once they get a couple melee facehugging them they don’t last long.

To start with
 Engineering is
 More important than 90 to 95 % of your abilities for PVP. Meaning you really don’t pvp without it lol. Even though you can


Now that’s out the way, warlock can be super easy so can a mage. Fear dot dot fear spam or frostbolt rank 1 / max rank spam with nova spam on melee for easy kills or just hope your stuff crits with counter spell on casters.

Both are legit classes but mage is relatively easier than lock in my opinion mainly for 2 reasons. 1: Locks are super weak till aq40 really whereas mages are just ballers from the very beginning and become much much stronger as time and gear gets upgraded. 2: You do NOT have to micro manage pets and their abilities.

I myself am going lock though as it is one main that I haven’t had in vanilla or 1.12 clones in 10 years+.

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Vanilla pvp locks were best as destruction hands down, nobody is getting a SB off in pvp with melee all in the grill. Destruction blew stuff up just as hard as any mage spec.

If you play lock prepare to have your face pushed in by all melee, rouges and warriors eat you for lunch and there is NOTHING that can be done to stop it!

Lock will dominate any other caster 1v1 especially a mage, it will be a crush fest. Lock was designed to destroy casters and mage was designed to counter Melee.

Mages get to run away and locks have to stack stam and tank, there is zero escape.

Personally, I’ll take tailoring because I want to keep it at endgame. Bags are always in demand. And because I like crafting items along the way that help.

The robes are indeed BiS and awesome to have
 BUT


Leveling Tailoring to 300 is very expensive
 even if you farm the cloth
 the value of selling it it really high
 especially at the beginning of the server.

It will definitely cause you to slow down your First Aid leveling if that is important to you (and it should be).

Keep in mind that the pattern for the robe is a drop in Scholomance. and may take a little while in getting it to drop. Tailoring does have several other items worthwhile, and as mentioned later on the Bloodvine set is VERY nice and BoE so you can make bank.

So it’s really down to gold
 or better geared before raid drops.