What did you guys base your choice on when you picked a mage or a warlock?

[FelPlague]

Warlcok? Cause i heard the rotation was easy, i got to focus on helping others dps, and also got cool demon things.

[Kokolums]

Warlocks are far from weak in PvP, stacking shadow resistance is not a thing, unless you are dueling, its not like you're going to run around with a Shadow resistance set in your bags (Shadow resistance is not a very common stat to find on gear thats not completely useless for anything but stacking shadow resistance, and if you did stack SR, a warlock could easily kill you with fire damage cause you would be very low on normal stats)

In vanilla WoW I had a set of shadow resist gear in my bags and if I ran into a lock I immediately swapped it on and killed it.

[Chaelexi]

Both classes are really good in vanilla. At least in 1.12.1.
So far, I only played melee classes in vanilla, and I'd like to try a caster for a change once classic arrives: I'm obviously looking at warlocks and mages, but I just can't make a choice. I'm not even sure how it feels to play either one of them in PVP, pve, for farming, leveling, and so on.

See what I mean? How do you guys make a choice between these two casters? Also, does the faction matter that much?

Warlocks were not good in 1.12.1, they were average and were only brought for curses to make other dps preform better.

[Zoneseek]

My memory is foggy but I think the original warlock class page on the wow website prior to the game launching highlighted them as having anti-magic shields, immolate and infernals. Being an undead caster fan in warcraft 3 I thought that sounded good.

I wasn't too pleased when I realized the mechanics behind 2 of 3 of those "highlights". Immolate was always a good one though.

[Nomads]

My memory is foggy but I think the original warlock class page on the wow website prior to the game launching highlighted them as having anti-magic shields, immolate and infernals. Being an undead caster fan in warcraft 3 I thought that sounded good.

I wasn't too pleased when I realized the mechanics behind 2 of 3 of those "highlights". Immolate was always a good one though.

Pet Class or Pure Glass Canon.

Mage was my vanilla character because I loved the idea of minimal survival with massive burst dps. Back on WoW beta, mages had Invisibility that let you see other players. It wasn't broken until your spell cast, so you could charge a pyro blast while invisible, and then POM another pyro blast to immediately 2 shot people before they even knew you were there... it was a blast.

[Battlebeard]

I love vanilla but I will certainly miss flying etc. So I'd go Mage if I had to chose, for portals.

[Roxyfoxy]

Or you can just roll a mage and not depend on Thunderfury tanks with Shadow Priests and a stack of Warlocks (about the least played class in Vanilla) to be able to do top damage.

It's what I am saying basically - you keep bringing these scenarios where very specific raid composition is needed to do what mages do by themselves pretty much.

Not even talking about QoL benefits of not having to grind mobs before raid just to be able to function.

Uhm. Mages need to do the same thing when they go fire. But stacking more than 5 mages doesnt add much to the ignite stack. Meaning they are just a average dps at that point. Warlocks can be stacked indefinatly for higher dps gain. A dps that is much higher than the mages not contributing to the ignite stack.


Very spesific raid comp? The only difference is you bring a shadowpriest. Same thing as if you bring a ton of mages and a warlock to buff them.
I dont think you understand the fact about a optimal raid setup, which is squeesing out every bit of possible dps, which means warlock stacking is the highest dps in the game after fury warriors.

And shard farming is not hard nor time consuming. 90% of it can be done during raids on trash.

[Gaidax]

Uhm. Mages need to do the same thing when they go fire. But stacking more than 5 mages doesnt add much to the ignite stack. Meaning they are just a average dps at that point. Warlocks can be stacked indefinatly for higher dps gain. A dps that is much higher than the mages not contributing to the ignite stack.


Very spesific raid comp? The only difference is you bring a shadowpriest. Same thing as if you bring a ton of mages and a warlock to buff them.
I dont think you understand the fact about a optimal raid setup, which is squeesing out every bit of possible dps, which means warlock stacking is the highest dps in the game after fury warriors.

And shard farming is not hard nor time consuming. 90% of it can be done during raids on trash.

It's much easier to stack what is the most popular caster in vanilla as opposed to least popular one and on top of that having actual shadow priest in raid, which is basically a debuff bot.

Your 90% does not fly on progress.

I mean ok, you can conjure all kinds of nonsense to try and sway things towards warlocks, but it's pretty much tryharding right there as opposed to going safe route with mages who simply ticked all the right checkboxes for a top rounded out damage dealer in Vanilla.

Reality is - guilds won't cater to you - most of the guilds will go by tried and true stack mages/rogues and even wars because that's what does most damage (and you need extra tanks anyway for some stuff) with least crutches and then fill the holes with random trash like hunters, warlocks and what not. Guild with 5 mages in rooster? I can guarantee that... Guild with frikkin' 6 warlocks and 2 spriests? Good luck there, bud.

I am not even talking that if Blizz starts with MC and not 1.12.1 then it's even not up to discussion, because whole house of cards for warlocks relied on having ~25%crit, something you did not have until late BWL to even begin talking about doing decent damage. Meanwhile mages facerolled Frostbolt with effectively nullified resistances.

It's just that simple and was the actual reality on the ground.

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If it was TBC it would be whole another matter - Shadow Bolt spec scaled like mad because you could take sac and all Destruction stuff for SB, Locks got aggro drop and Spriests were an actual thing because of Replenishment - so it ended up being perfect storm of OP. But Vanilla, nope.

[Deleted]

When I first picked up WoW in 2006 I actually made a Human Warlock first. I didn't think much about it at the time, I just thought being a Warlock sounded really interesting, I liked how it was a caster but not as "basic" as being a Mage throwing fireballs (theme wise). So I just liked the theme of Warlocks.

Ended up rolling Shaman ultimately as I went Horde instead, but if I'd stuck with Alliance I would've remained a Warlock and it probably would be my main to this day. Odd to think about, haha.

[Aleksej89]

I just had a stroke when someone mentioned soul shards.
I have never experienced a more unfun gameplay mechanic.

[Schaapa]

Back in the day, summoning Felsteed sounded a little badass, so that's why I made a warlock

[Flarelaine]

I basically ported over previously played characters from other games.

[Deleted]

The way soulshards works is what made me choose a Mage. And the portals,own food and crazy dps...yeah...that too

[Deleted]

Since I was younger at the time, like 18 or something, I think I just liked the idea of magic and casting spells, I remember I was very close to picking Warlock but my friend already had one so I went for Mage. It seemed different to your bog standard melee classes at the time. So yeah, class fantasy all the way.

[Deleted]

mage description at vanilla said something like "master of elements and defeating/killing groups of enemies"
so i though i could kill groups of 5-10 players alone
i remember reading teleports skills and thinking "so i can make a teleport to any place , will be fun to attack cities"
yea i expected to pick horde and teleport to stormwind and ironforge

[Zka]

Mages were promised highest dps by wow booklet and I loved the class fantasy. I actually topped charts almost always, so it worked out well.

[Staysafe]

1-2 warlocks would suffice. Rest mages, easily better combination with superior damage. Warlock was a waste of a spot besides one or two simply to cover soulstones and CoE.

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Also healthstones wut? Healthstone was a one shot per shard and you had to trade people to give it to them. It was not feasible and certainly not "utility".

It is VERY obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about. Where to begin...
1) BARE MINIMUM each raid needs 2 warlocks for Curse of Recklessness AND Curse of Elements. Warlocks underperform prior to AQ40, so there is an argument to be made for only bringing 2 prior to AQ releasing. Once Warlocks get AQ gear, they become the hardest scaling class in the game as their spellpower coefficient is 4% greater than a mage and their DPS multiplicatively increases the more of them you have in the raid due to Improved Shadowbolt uptime which is now scaling insanely hard due to the high %crit values on AQ+ gear. For Naxx progression or AQ40 farming, guilds literally bring 8 Warlocks if they can.
2) Healthstones are an insane utility and as a Warlock you will be expected to bring 30+ soulshards to each raid to make them for tanks and melee DPS, minimum.

[heinz0r]

Used to play shadowpriest as my first char when wow got released, and when a couple friends rerolled on a fresh server a few months later, I went warlock because it was basically a better shadowpriest in every way, especially in pvp.

It remained my most beloved class till today, even though alot of the crazy amount of control from back then has long gone. It is definately more boring to play now, but well... that can be said about pretty much all the classes nowadays

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Warlocks level fast and get a free mount. I rolled a warrior, I only enjoy tanking in raids or dungeons so it worked out but goddamn warlocks had some nice perks.

[Deleted]

Mage - always wanted to be a vending machine.