Mage vs Warlock

[Deleted]

I have a question purelly based on progressive raiding.. We have several good warlocks and mages in the guild.. I am just wondering, as my mage is currently my main and warlock an alt, from which setup would the 10man team benefit more.
Having for example, 2 locks and 1 mage or 2 mages and 1 lock?
I mean, I love the playstyle as a demo lock, affli is still under my knoweledge so far, but as far as I see the DPS from the warlock it's just immense.. I still have time till the 25th to decide which will be my main, but before I make it I'd like some advise from people who also play both and are thinking about this.

[halfawake]

I'm in the same position, except we currently have 2 mages and 1 warlock and are gaining another warlock for MoP so we will have two mages and two warlocks.

Both classes are remarkably similar in utility now with both having an immunity that can cheese mechanics (dark bargain/unending resolve vs ice block or cauterize if ice block doesn't work), both provide spell power buff + 1 (crit vs magic debuff), healthstone vs food, portals out vs portals in, aoe slows (blizzard/CoC vs hand of gul'dan), spell lock vs counterspell, etc. The thing that is probably most useful to a raid is the buffs you bring relative to other classes and your soaking potential, which both classes can do rather well now. After that it comes down to how much dps each does, which can change all the time but currently looks strong for both classes with mages being better in single target and locks better in multi dotting.

To me mages are an awesome class until you have to deal with the level 90 talents. Its the primary reason I'm considering making a change. Frost and fire both provide compelling gameplay in my mind (read: fun and enough involvement to not fall asleep), but I haven't given arcane a serious go yet on the beta. Warlocks don't have upkeep talents at 90. And that to me is the biggest feature on playing a lock. In fact, their talents add utility and don't get in the way of your gameplay where I see the mage ones being cumbersome.

When I have invocation and I'm coming up for an evo channel my eyes kinda go wide and I'm just like wow... 6 seconds... channeling... It feels like it takes you out of the flow of what you were doing... I get into a similar feeling with rop. With that its like... Ok don't move or you'll lose dps, plan everything out like it was arcane in firelands. It's a little better but I love being able to move around as fire. Incanter's ward is a decent design for one of the choices except that a lot of the time it won't be up to you to keep it up, if theres no raid damage it's just the wrong choice. I don't like these choices, some people will. Maybe you do. I don't think it's detrimental to the raid group to have more than one warlock now. They provide a lot of utility, as do mages... I think the choice is going to come down to gearing. How many people do you have on each token? Do you have too many clothies (like our guild seems to be having now : /), etc... The choice is yours my friend! I hope I've laid out enough points to make your choice easier, I know I can't decide yet, but good luck and have fun with whatever you decide to play :P

[Shangalar]

Let's not turn this into yet another levle 90 talents discussion please

I can give you some important advice about your raid composition regarding mages, warlocks and the other 9 classes. Let this be your order of thinking:
1. Do the players involved know left from right and understand the fight mechanics?
2. Which one of them does the most damage, not according to Simcraft, but according to their performance?
3. Can you help improve the people who are underperforming?
4. Based on 2 and 3, check who will be benched this time. (coming from a 25-man guild, we don't have a lot of benched people)
5. Take into account guild rank, guild loyalty, relationships between people.

Who brings which utility is almost of no consequence to you when choosing between warlocks and mages, especially if you will definitely take 1 of each class, which will let you cover the entire spectrum of buffs they bring. Who can do better theoretically is the most useless question I see asked every day on forums and in the game. Test them and take who is better for your *team*, not who is better based on raid comp theory.

[Deleted]

@ Halfawake if anything I think you made the choice rather harder then easier.. You more or less summed everything up and putted them together.. They both have their pro's and their cons but I think I'll have to play my Warlock allot now, dungeons, raids and see how it feels for me to play it in both single target and multi dot fights.. As for now I feel I can outpower DPS with my Mage but that's just because I know him inside out and it has always been my main.. Yet I do like the playstyle of Affli/Demo and I think I can get the feeling to keep up my rotation the good way and use other utility's to improve raidawarness (they just have so many more buttons then a Mage :P) but I think up untill the night before the release I will need a talk with my leaders to make the final decision, caus once MoP is released I can only level up 1 as after that I need to level my healer for the alt runs. So already thanks for your advise, it putted my point of view in another daylight but it all comes down to how hard I can push my DPS in fights and eventually which playstyle fits me best.


As for Shangalar, don't worry this wont evolve into a talents discussion but the summing and comparing was pretty useful :-)
I'm not a leader of any kind so I wont decide of what the composition will look like, but telling from what I've seen of the other 2 warlocks, the mage and me is that we understand mechanics and have raidawareness. Probably when MoP hits we'll have 15-16 people as the guild also comes down from 25man, people that left when 25man ended are comming back once released etc, so the team will be pretty crowded and strong. I think 3 mages and 2 warlocks will be applying for a spot (or who knows, 2 mages and 3 warlocks) so occasionally people will get benched. But the "token" part you just mentionned is probably something worth looking to aswell, as gear will be, as always, a crucial factor for clearing a content.

[Tenchinage]

(they just have so many more buttons then a Mage :P)

For me, this is why I've switch to my Warlock (who I didn't play at _all_ in Cata) and been playing him solid since 5.0 for the practice. My Fire Mage lost the following from his bars: Blast Wave, Flame Orb, Mana Shield, Mage Ward, Instant Flamestrike. I literally have empty space on my Mage's bars after 5.0 hit. While the Warlock seemed to pick up even more utility abilities.

Our 25-man raid has 3 mages and 1 warlock, myself and another mage are going warlock putting us at 1 mage and 3 warlocks. We just see a lot more raid utility in warlocks. The big one being the new warlock portal. With 3 Warlocks we can now move 15 other people around fight mechanics instantly. While a mage can only move himself (blink).

On the math-side, I see dark-soul being more valuable at the beginning of an expansion than the mage level 90 talents. Dark Soul is a flat 30% boost to a particular stat (Haste, Crit, or Mastery). This is a lot more valuable at the beginning of the expansion when secondary stats are low compared to the Mage's spell power damage increase from the level 90 talents. Though eventually, spell damage will increase with gear throughout the expansion and the level 90 mage talents will probably really start to shine during the 2nd patch (meaning Warlocks will be doing less damage than mages then), and then they'll probably have to be nerfed in the 3rd patch bring Warlocks and Mages back in step DPS-wise. Just my prediction for how the numbers will work this time. :-)

Also, (Healthstones > Mana Cakes) as it's during combat.

[Menphis]

My Fire Mage lost the following from his bars: Blast Wave, Flame Orb, Mana Shield, Mage Ward, Instant Flamestrike. I literally have empty space on my Mage's bars after 5.0 hit.

Yeah, being able to get a Hotstreak proc intentionally is very good this patch,
but aoe'ing at multiple mobs is just lame than 4.x.x .
I use to just build an ignite on the target with the most HP, then spread that ignite again and again by intentionally making impact to proc via Blastwave.
And also using instant flamestrike.

But now, flamestrike has a cast time and a CD, thus is simple not that useful for moving targets even though it has slow.
Cause you can instant cast it while the mobs move.
So you only have blizzard and arcane explosion for aoe. But imo, its just weak.

Of course you can spec in to frost bomb, but not sure about that as fire.
And I really agree about the Dark Soul and the new portal which warlocks get.

[Grubjuice]

sounds like what you need is an shaman, druid, or Priest...

i will also say this: Warlocks have better Executes than mages (Drain Soul, Soul Fire, Shadowburn [drain soul in particular is amazing for extended execute with +damage modifier])

They also have decent resource pooling + on-demand burst: Soulburn:Soul Swap/Chaos Bolt/Touch of Chaos (and in that respect are similar to Arcane)

Warlocks have great AoE. Mage AoE is really built around Mage Bomb plus each specs incidental spell Cleaving (Glyph of Ice lance; Inferno Blast; Arcane barrage [blizzard and Flamestike are really old and outmoded mechanically]) but Warlocks are the Bees Knees for AoE, a Demo Lock with Hellfire/Immolation Aura and Void Ray and Hand of Gul'dan and Dual Felstorm and Mannaroth's Fury... OMG)

But mages are better sustained Dps and have better opening dps if the fight requires opening at full throttle (Destro and Demo particularly have horribly long ramp ups, affliction not so much).

I would definitely go with a mage for Single Target patchwerk-type fights, Warlock for AoE, either for Burst and council and mobility fights certain specs do better than other for each of those.