Warlock: Weak caster?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I wasn’t around during classic in the early 2000s. So I’m playing classic with no WoW experience whatsoever. I’ve heard somethings about retail. I never took retail seriously. So I thought I’d try warlock, and when it comes to raw power I feel so inferior to mage. Their raw power is insane. For their rotation, the damage is just wow. In dungeons, Fire Blast into Nova into AE spam. They can beat my damage without any + spell power. I have +119 shadow and 108 fire. Warlock has dots that don’t ever run to term. Hellfire is pretty much a dot. Rain of fire is weaker than Blizzard in terms of raw power. Mages have multiple instants and can move while casting. They get multiple talents to help with threat management. Warlock gets none. Without Intensity, any mob that aggros you can interrupt your channel dropping you out of Hellfire/Rain of Fire. Voidwalker shield isn’t enough to protect a 15 sec channel. I remember reading that warlock had great utility. I’m starting to feel that warlock utility is just over blown. For the inferior damage that Hellfire provides, why don’t warlocks at least get a talent for fire resistance to reduce the self inflicted harm?

Mage CCs are safer to use. Sheep is great, the only equivalent is banish which works on only elementals and demons. Sheep is fantastic against humanoids, Warlocks have fear and AoE fear. Mages pack AoE slows and roots, this gives them diversity. They have counter spell and Improved Counter Spell makes Counter Spell silence. Warlocks must keep changing curses to get the most out of situations and if CoA isn’t on they are loosing damage.

Looking forward to raiding, I am level 57, my task in a raids will be to throw a curse and spam Shadow Bolt? So a class that provides great utility is now a summon slave and healthstone vendor?

On mobility, warlock just suffers in every way possible (free mounts at 40 is bleh) 100g isn’t much. Warlock has good mana management but once you are juggling multiple mobs this is harder and you can’t make your own water. Mages can manage massive pulls, dump mana and just drink. They can be so good that they don’t get hit. If three mages are working together, a spell cleave group is amazing exp. Warlocks can’t do that. Cataclysm and Pyroclasm don’t compete with Nova and Slows.

When I read about whether warlock improves, all I hear is that eventually warlocks get spell hit and become amazing. I don’t get it, so they can hit bosses with their shadow bots and their designated curse doesn’t fail, save that 1%, and that makes them amazing? But where is the raw power? Sure, players mention Ruin (for crit damage), but mage has Ice Shards. And crit chance, how many talents do they have for increasing crit chance?

For self peel, what does warlock have to use defensively? Just the voidwalker shield? Mage has barriers for days.

Gold making: portals, food, drinks, aoe grinding. Also mage portals don’t need x3 players. Warlock needs 3 players to summon? What the hell? Do mages use boats after they get their portals. So on top of having their blink, which they can use both offensively and defensively, they have massive global presence. Warlock has SS, and summon which they have to cast multiple times. I wont get into soul shards and the limitations that they actually impose on the class.

For gold making, what do warlocks have? Mara, repeat until you become sick of it? This doesn’t compare to the stuff mages can do. If you wanna gather herbs and ores, other classes are just faster, mage, druid, shaman.
Also mara is nothing special, mage gold/hr numbers are higher.

Going into classic, I had this idea that warlock was an amazing dark caster. I really like the darkness it stands for. Even the talents have cool names: Cataclysm, Ruin, Aftermath, Devastation. Except the class just feels weak.

I feel deceived. The class is beginning to feel like a gimped emo wanna-be mage. If they had heals, they would be shadow priest with demons.

I won’t get into threat management when it comes to the demons and their mana cost to damage efficiency. I don’t even use the VW, stacking stam & int I can beat its health. Have it tank two, three mobs and that health drops. At least the succubus has a good auto attack. So just re-roll to master class? Mage, warrior and rogue are BiS dps. Warrior and rogue also have great utility, I won’t talk about those and hunters, I’ll just stick to mage.

My class feel inadequate. It frustrates me. Halp?

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Soul link actually splits the damage with your pet, and fire protection pots also absorb it.

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I’d love to dig into this one deep and help out a brotha. I’m off work in about an hour and when I get home I will edit this post with some info and go through this step by step.

The TLDR will end up being, Warlocks are the best!!!ish

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Thanks, I kinda need something.

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I got you, stick with it, ITS SOOOO worth it.

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Warlocks are slow starters…

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I loved my vanilla warlock so much I made another one for classic!

I’m also at work and can’t make a detailed post, but make sure you try all the specs maybe one is more your style than affliction.

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In PvP I’d much rather be a lock than a mage.

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Warlocks are superior, they just have a bigger “learning curve” and are harder to master. Warlocks are skillful compared their pewpew mage cousin.

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Grass is always greener.

Fire protection pots are your best friend. Drink one, send your vw around to collect mobs. Hit suffering as you rain of fire. Then after the second tick the mobs aggro to you, vw sac and cast hellfire and watch everything die. Focus on mobs 5+ levels below you and enjoy the show.

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Classic balance wasn’t meant to make every class equal. Each class supports the next.

You won’t be able to beat mage raw dps in all situations but you definitely contribute in other areas that they can not.

PVP balance is more akin to Rock Paper Scissors. You will rock those mage scissors to pieces.

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Mage is a glass cannon that can dance around the field. In my noobness, I think Ice Block is more broken that fear. You can use it to dictate a fight, against casters (have no experience with melee) you can use it to literally direct a fight.

And there is Cold Snap.

Maybe I’m wrong, never played mage, but looking at their skills. Can they do a double Pyroblast? Sheep followed by a manual cast of Pyroblast, then Presence of mind and an instant Pyroblast. Forget normal damage, if Pyroblast double crits, what can survive that? A resist tank?

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Warlocks do respectable damage and are under played. The utility and damage combo makes it so you easily find guilds in desperate need for warlock’s since they already have so many mages. Definitely stick with lock it’s the smart move, they even outpace mages as the tiers continue so there is no losses when rolling lock

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I am liking the challenge. I just don’t feel the reward, aside from saving the dungeon parties. Banish, enslaving demons, a careful fear. But where is the power? Warlocks, aren’t they supposed to be good dps?

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This is always the trend with locks in every expansion… the first tier they are slow and many question why they are even playing lock and then you hit that sweet middle and end game portion of an expansion and you see lock topping every raid and battleground ever. Slow and steady wins the race is the lock motto

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Warlocks freaking rock by Phase 6.

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aren’t they supposed to be good dps

Locks aren’t a pure dps class like mages, and yeah our dps doesn’t match theirs until ZG hits. That doesn’t make locks useless though; every raid needs 3 minimum to apply CoR, CoE, CoS. Many raids also take more because extra Soulstones are nice too.

Not to mention in pvp locks are top-tier and can eat mages faces easily. A well-geared decently skilled lock can beat any other class in the game even with comparable gear, there’s a reason duel tourneys either ban or gimp SL locks.

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Weird, I don’t see a tanking or healing talent tree.

Warlocks are pure DPS. They just have a lot of utility and survivability built into their class, and are restricted to only using one damaging ability for the most part which is why they do less DPS. That and as you said pre-ZG they lack the hit necessary.

It absolutely changes in TBC, but it doesn’t really matter.

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Classic is such easy content no raid group needs to min-max classes unless the raid is full of terrible players, then they might have to.

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SL Lock with a Felhunter out since it will likely partially resist both. Or simply silence him in the middle of his little tirade (Spell lock is a blanket silence) and Devour PoM.

Or if you have even .5 seconds to see it coming… a lock with a Voidwalker out to sac. The Sac shield with Imp. Voidwalker will eat an entire Pyro crit. Easily.