Warrior vs. Warlock Launch

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Hey guys and gals, I’ve been debating which class to pick at classic wow launch. I’m fixated on it either being a warrior or warlock. My interests are PvP and PvE.

The major decision maker for me so far is prior to BWL gear warlocks do not appear to get a boost from their epic options anywhere near what a warrior gets. Most warlock tier1 is barely an upgrade.

Between lionheart helm, stronghold gaunts, tier 1, and obsidian edge blade a warrior will be 500% stronger than a warlocks potential could be. Also since this launch event (for now) only happens once this impactful itemization phase seems more important to capitalize on a warrior than a warlock. After BWL comes out warlocks have a fair shake in my opinion.

Am I missing something here? Is there warlock gear after pre-bis that can provide a substantial boost to warlocks or is pretty much all meh.

I will never have enough time (I think) to be the guilds main tank, so most likely end up in a DPS role which is less enjoyable to me.

P.S. I was also thinking of rolling my lock as an alt after I get prebis on my warrior (this would give me a chance to catch up to BWL by the time it rolls out)

P.S.S. I know this decision is subjective. :sunglasses:

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I vote for a class starting with War. Because you seem to be all about War.

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Warlocks are so strong in vanilla that blue gear (or when leveling up STA heaving green gear) is all you need to destroy everyone. Everyone that is except warriors. A good warrior was really for the most part the only class that gave my warlock trouble in vanilla. But really good warriors are few and far between. But even years later I remember them well.

Pick whichever class you enjoy more. Both are among the strongest in PvP. Or at least they were back in the day.

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Really - not married to warrior but I don’t want to ignore the major gap in itemization for warlocks. I did not play a warlock in classic but I’ve done my research and want to confirm my findings because in all honesty I do want to play a warlock instead of a warrior but when I could just roll another one after I make my warrior, since gear won’t have a huge impact until BWL.

I really enjoy playing classic affliction warlocks, AV was a blast! The bonus as well is you get to go destruction if you want too and it’s a completely different play style which helps keep it interesting.

Where my warlock fans at??? Sell me :slight_smile:

5

You should play a dWARf shadow priest and melt faces.

And it still satisfies the W.A.R. criteria you have set forth.

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I’ve always mained Warlock, from my first day of WoW onward. I can only really talk for PvE in Vanilla, I did not PvP then nor was I even a really hardcore player.

Pros:

  1. Free mount at 40.
  2. Really cool (but very much not free) Epic Mount quest at 60
  3. Leveling is super fast, you basically have no downtime thanks to your pet, life tap, drains, healthstone, and even soulstone on yourself while leveling to rez faster.
  4. Always good to have in a group for general utility.
  5. Summon quests were also really fun

Cons:

  1. We don’t top the meters
  2. Soul shard management.
    • You will probably wind up giving up a bag slot for a soul bag to hold your shards.
    • You will be farming shards constantly, and want to have a good supply before you zone in to a raid. Even with only giving cookies to a tank or two and soulstone on a rez for wipe recovery plus summoning your demons and your own healthstone you just will not have enough shards generated naturally in raid. So fill em up before raid.
    • You also don’t want to have too many shards, they don’t stack and you don’t really want to give all your bag space up for shards. Generally you can setup an addon like Forte Exorcist or a macro on drainsoul to destroy a shard as you create it you use when you have enough shards during soloing content or similar.
  3. The Debuff Limit on bosses can limit what we do. We will generally want to have a curse per warlock rolling on the boss, and then there are debuffs like sunders, but you don’t have room for everyone to fully dot the boss, so in raid a large number of your GCDs are spent shadowbolting.
  4. I may have been bad at gold management back then but I remember that grimoires really made leveling expensive, pet books were not cheap.

All in all warlock is fun, I absolutely love playing the class, and it can be a metric ton of fun, but if I have to sell you on it, you’ll probably be annoyed greatly by some of the drawbacks, my biggest one being soul shard management which is just annoying.

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Nice descriptive post, thank you. The cons you listed make the class interesting IMO.

I think the thing that keeps hanging me up is the Tier 1 itemization. If I put in a great deal of work to get geared up in lets say full purples of tier 1 / MC / Onyxia gear. Will I experience a vantage point from the competition?

Isn’t all the gear primarily just +stam and little + spell power?

Can anyone comment that got full tier 1 gear about their experiences in PvP? How did you rank up against competition and how did that compare to when you prebis etc.

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Watching the streamers, Warriors are getting chewed up and spit out in PvP. I’d go Warlock, Undead.

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Roll both. Alternate. Use the one with the rested bonus.

Although, having a 60 on a PvP server is an advantage when you’re leveling an alt. Someone camps you, come back with your 60

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Sometimes still die on your 60 and log out in shame… :frowning:

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Ill def roll both, but I want to get the experience of focusing one mostly at the start so I can reap the rewards of it. After awhile everyone has tier 1 or tier 2 even and it doesn’t really matter, you can roll whatever alt you want.

Does anyone recall their experiences with being modestly geared in tier 1 fighting a warrior geared in tier 1?

(assuming he has a decent weapon)

The play style of warlock is more favorable imo, being kited everywhere as a warrior is a major drag.

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I remember dueling some warriors. I’m 56 lock, they’re 60. I’d say I had a 33% win, iirc.
Probably because they tried toying with me and it would backfire.

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Go warrior 100%… has everything going for it besides the fact that they’re sort of difficult to level for a first class (just time consuming really).

  • class fantasy
  • you can tank any 5 man content as any spec
  • top DPS
  • coolest armor (subjective)
  • mortal strike orc hunters to the face
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This made me laugh… hah.

I can’t believe this is such a hard decision I was married to the idea of playing a warrior and have been playing in the beta, what has made me question all this was playing a warlock in AV. Really fun.

I mean I go back and fourth about the gear (it being better for warrior in the tier 1 phase than warlock).

I look at felheart, it does have a substantial amount of spell power but will all of that stack up to one mortal strike crit from a naked warrior with arcanite reaper? Hmmmmmmm

Gear setup im looking at now:

Slot Name Location Boss Sta Int Sp Crit
Head Nemesis Skullcap Onyxia’s Lair Onyxia 26 16 32
Neck Choker of the Firelord Molten Core Ragnaros 7 7 34
Back Sapphiron Drape Onyxia’s Lair Onyxia 10 17 14
Chest Robe of Volatile Power Molten Core Luc/ Geh/ Sha / Sul 10 15 23 2%
Hands Felheart Gloves Molten Core Lucifron 18 15 9 1%
Belt Mana Igniting Cord Molten Core Magmadar / Garr / Baron / Golemagg 12 16 25 1%
Legs Nemesis Leggings Molten Core Ragnaros 23 16 39
Ring Ring of Spell Power Molten Core Luc/ Geh/ Shaz / Sulf 33
Trinket Talisman of Ephemeral Power Molten Core Mag / Garr / Baron / Gol
MH Azuresong Mageblade Molten Core Golemagg 7 12 40 1%
OH Fire Runed Grimoire Molten Core Magmadar / Garr / Baron / Golemagg 12 21 11
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Go warlock, more complex, way less competition, and broken in PVP. Still desirable in raids, amazing in pvp, mid dps, not much competition. If private servers taught us anything there’s going to be a wave of warriors/ rogues. Warlock. All the way man.

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Yeah that gear is cool and all, but how many times can a warr spam fear and /lol at their opponent till they die?

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Man. The deeper I dive the more perplexed I am.

Obsidian edge blade won’t have a chance to do an extra attack in this version right?

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Warriors REQUIRE a pocket healer to do literally anything in the game. They are HALF a class.

Warlocks kill everything AND heal themselves.

There is only one correct answer. :sunglasses:

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19

This is how I feel too… I mean basically a warrior goes in and hope for the crit if they get CC’d and can’t break it or don’t get perma healed it’s over.

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Have you checked this out? classic. wowhead. com / guides/ classic- wow- warrior-class-o
It shows every piece of BIS gear for each phase and other random stuff. Wowhead is eventually coming out with these types of guides for all classes, but this one is quite good.