Warlocks in Classic

[blarkaey]

How are Warlocks in classic? Thinking of rolling one. What spec should I use for PvE dungeons/light raiding? (casual raider, I raided MC/AQ20 and a couple other ones but never got that far) I joined WoW a couple months before the 1.10 Priest changes where they changed the Greater Heal cast time from 4 seconds to 3 seconds. I mained a Holy Priest most of classic but I want to try something different. Or I might just go back to my Priest, dunno yet.

[nToxik]

Have fun farming shards before every raid/dungeon.

[Sun-Ra]

Warlock will be my first alt I try to hit 60 with, unless soul shards despawn from your inventory after 15 minutes of being logged out. If that is the case I’ll consider another class. Soul shards are tedious enough already, and I’m not sure when they removed the logout expiration.

Locks are welcomed in raids, and probably have the most versatility in PvP as all 3 trees are viable and your pets add nice dynamics to PvP encounters.

Just be ready for farm soul shards and run around the whole world multiple times for warlock quests(One of the main reasons they get a free mount at 40)

[Mahogany]

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...BMzkZ0QEzA04BA

This is what most pve warlocks will play, you also have 2 points to spend in whatever talent you enjoy the most

[FelPlague]

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...BMzkZ0QEzA04BA

This is what most pve warlocks will play, you also have 2 points to spend in whatever talent you enjoy the most

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...BMzB-BAE_AwwEA
you mean this? cause nah fucking you want that mana reduction man.
also searing pain, wtf man?
fire damage so doesent work with succ, and also your gear.
and man extra threat, nah boi we already have enoguh trouble keeping threat off.

[Mahogany]

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...BMzB-BAE_AwwEA
you mean this? cause nah fucking you want that mana reduction man.
also searing pain, wtf man?
fire damage so doesent work with succ, and also your gear.
and man extra threat, nah boi we already have enoguh trouble keeping threat off.

Clearly never did any warlock research where they've done the math in how bad the 5% mana reduction cost actually is
You cast Searing pain when a mob or boss is about to die and your shadowbolt cast won't finish on time... or when it takes extra fire dmg like in BWL
You're not even taking Shadowburn for the extra dmg boost on trash or world questing?

[Kersey]

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...ck/AAF8BD_NPN0

Deep Destro FTW!

[Methodd]

Warlock will be my first alt I try to hit 60 with, unless soul shards despawn from your inventory after 15 minutes of being logged out. If that is the case I’ll consider another class. Soul shards are tedious enough already, and I’m not sure when they removed the logout expiration.

Locks are welcomed in raids, and probably have the most versatility in PvP as all 3 trees are viable and your pets add nice dynamics to PvP encounters.

Just be ready for farm soul shards and run around the whole world multiple times for warlock quests(One of the main reasons they get a free mount at 40)

Soul shards themselves were permanently in your bags until used but the items you created from them were not. Health stones, soul stones, and spell stones disappeared if you were logged out for more than 15 minutes (same with conjoured food and water from mages).

[Stormspellz]

How are Warlocks in classic? Thinking of rolling one. What spec should I use for PvE dungeons/light raiding? (casual raider, I raided MC/AQ20 and a couple other ones but never got that far) I joined WoW a couple months before the 1.10 Priest changes where they changed the Greater Heal cast time from 4 seconds to 3 seconds. I mained a Holy Priest most of classic but I want to try something different. Or I might just go back to my Priest, dunno yet.

raiding: like most specs you had a simplified rotation you spammed shadowbolt and kept up coe or cos on the target, top notch in pvp, expect random "hey can i get a summon" from random people when you are out in the world, and learn to love farming for shards.

[XtraT]

In PvE they're only useful for the unique buffs they bring (CoE, CoS and CoR). They have OK damage but no range compare to mages. Soulstones and healthstones are mildly useful.

In PvP they kinda suck. No escape, low mitigation, DoTs are easily dispelled, undead rogues are everywhere (if you're alliance), they get trained really hard by warriors. Fear spam is excellent though and they can hold their own in 1v1 situations with the proper pet out.

[rhorle]

Have fun farming shards before every raid/dungeon.

It really wasn't that bad unless you wipe a lot. The biggest issue is going to be bag space. The bigger soul shard bags didn't happen until TBC if I recall.

[jackofwind]

Most Warlocks who are raiding and doing other content will run SM/Ruin,which looks like this.

Points can be moved around in Affliction based on personal preference. Imp. CoA, Imp. CoE, and Drain Life/Soul pushback protection are essentially up to individuals (Imp. CoA is pretty bad though if you're looking for straight throughput.)

People may argue that it was required to have Warlocks specced into Imp. HS and Imp. Blood Pact, but that's simply not true. It's something that a lot of beginner guilds did in Vanilla, and you might spec that way at the outset of MC to help support your first couple of raids but once your tanks had a modicum of gear it was completely unnecessary. (And it was always unnecessary/sub-par performance in dungeons).

It really wasn't that bad unless you wipe a lot. The biggest issue is going to be bag space. The bigger soul shard bags didn't happen until TBC if I recall.

Nope, there's the Core Felcloth Bag in Vanilla for shards.

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In PvE they're only useful for the unique buffs they bring (CoE, CoS and CoR). They have OK damage but no range compare to mages. Soulstones and healthstones are mildly useful.

They outscale Mages from AQ40 onwards.

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Warlock will be my first alt I try to hit 60 with, unless soul shards despawn from your inventory after 15 minutes of being logged out. If that is the case I’ll consider another class. Soul shards are tedious enough already, and I’m not sure when they removed the logout expiration.

Shards are permanent, HS and SS are not.

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Have fun farming shards before every raid/dungeon.

Or just tagging trash with DS when you're already in a dungeon. Or rolling Shadowburn and never running out of shards for solo content.

Shard farming only ever becomes a pain if you're farming WSG/AB in a Conflag spec.

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How are Warlocks in classic? Thinking of rolling one. What spec should I use for PvE dungeons/light raiding? (casual raider, I raided MC/AQ20 and a couple other ones but never got that far) I joined WoW a couple months before the 1.10 Priest changes where they changed the Greater Heal cast time from 4 seconds to 3 seconds. I mained a Holy Priest most of classic but I want to try something different. Or I might just go back to my Priest, dunno yet.

You suffer as a Warlock until ZG and the Bloodvine set comes out because you scale hard off spell crit but have no spell hit talents which forces you to prioritize it over everything. Once you're in BWL/ZG gear though you take off and by AQ40 you outscale Mages.

In MC you're essentially relegated to a support class but by Naxx you're top-tier caster DPS.

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https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...BMzkZ0QEzA04BA

This is what most pve warlocks will play, you also have 2 points to spend in whatever talent you enjoy the most

This is pretty wrong, Most PvE Warlocks will run SM/Ruin because it's good in raids, fantastic for solo PvE, and still works well in PvP.

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Clearly never did any warlock research where they've done the math in how bad the 5% mana reduction cost actually is
You cast Searing pain when a mob or boss is about to die and your shadowbolt cast won't finish on time... or when it takes extra fire dmg like in BWL
You're not even taking Shadowburn for the extra dmg boost on trash or world questing?

That niche point of using Searing Pain is just that - niche. It's not worth investing any points in for random BWL trash. Unless you're going full Destro for PvP (ie: Succ/Conflag) you shouldn't put points in Imp. SP.

You use Shadowburn/Coil when the boss is going to die before you can get another SB off.

[Kudos]

Personally, I liked the short period where you could demonic sacrifice your Succubus for the damage buff and either goblin jumper cable or druid rez your succubus. That way you had the DS and the MD buffs at the same time. You played that around a 30 Demo / 21 Destro (Master Demo / Ruin) spec.

[jackofwind]

Personally, I liked the short period where you could demonic sacrifice your Succubus for the damage buff and either goblin jumper cable or druid rez your succubus. That way you had the DS and the MD buffs at the same time. You played that around a 30 Demo / 21 Destro (Master Demo / Ruin) spec.

We all did :P

[Kudos]

Or just tagging trash with DS when you're already in a dungeon. Or rolling Shadowburn and never running out of shards for solo content.

Shard farming only ever becomes a pain if you're farming WSG/AB in a Conflag spec.

I still had to farm shards to hand out individual health stones to everyone in the raid. Back then, all spells could be downranked too. MY tanks always wanted different ranks of healthstones. You'd wipe through multiple bags worth of shards before the raid even began.

[jackofwind]

I still had to farm shards to hand out individual health stones to everyone in the raid. Back then, all spells could be downranked too. MY tanks always wanted different ranks of healthstones. You'd wipe through multiple bags worth of shards before the raid even began.

To be completely honest it sounds like you had overly demanding tanks and possibly under-performing healers. Multiple ranks of HS per tank is really unnecessary and overkill. We pushed AQ40 content with one HS per tank per pull and a SS on a healer when it was up. I never once handed HS out to a whole raid in my entire Vanilla raiding career.

Summoning people did obviously use up a ton of shards, but with the Core Felcloth Bag and a few locks it was never really a hardship. It's also like the one thing you need to understand you're getting into before you roll a Warlock in Vanilla lol. That being said, running any raid except Ony gave you plenty of opportunity to replenish your shards without even needing to take extra time as the trash is all being killed anyways.

[Kudos]

To be completely honest it sounds like you had overly demanding tanks and possibly under-performing healers. Multiple ranks of HS per tank is really unnecessary and overkill. We pushed AQ40 content with one HS per tank per pull and a SS on a healer when it was up. I never once handed HS out to a whole raid in my entire Vanilla raiding career.

Or maybe they just like accessing all options available to them? It was over 14 years ago now, so It's a bit hard to ask them for their reasoning now.

[Th3Scourge]

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...BMzB-BAE_AwwEA
you mean this? cause nah fucking you want that mana reduction man.
also searing pain, wtf man?
fire damage so doesent work with succ, and also your gear.
and man extra threat, nah boi we already have enoguh trouble keeping threat off.

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...PPHPEMABOcDDAQ
I'l be running good old SM/Ruin

[Winstonwolfe]

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...BMzkZ0QEzA04BA

This is what most pve warlocks will play, you also have 2 points to spend in whatever talent you enjoy the most

I played with 3/5 in improved corruption. made it a .8 second skill which is long as you stand still is a global/instant. allows for points in suppression. For PvE that is.

[jackofwind]

Or maybe they just like accessing all options available to them? It was over 14 years ago now, so It's a bit hard to ask them for their reasoning now.

Sure, but it's still a fairly unreasonable demand considering HS were all on a linked CD and you wouldn't reasonably need/use more than one per fight (barring a very small number of particularly long fights). In my opinion it's somewhat like demanding multiple levels of conjured water from a Mage simply because the option is there.

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https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...PPHPEMABOcDDAQ
I'l be running good old SM/Ruin

Shadowburn/HF pushback suppression is so much more valuable than 3% reduced mana cost (which doesn't even net you an extra SB on the average boss fight).

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I played with 3/5 in improved corruption. made it a .8 second skill which is long as you stand still is a global/instant. allows for points in suppression. For PvE that is.

You only really need 3 points in Suppression, and that leaves plenty of room for 5/5 Imp Corruption. I can think of a ton of times when you'd want to refresh a Corruption while moving. I mean if it works for you that's great but it's definitely unorthodox.