Warlock vs. Hunter - help me pick

[Piesor]

I personally love that I have to keep my ammo on me and keep my pet fed. Part of the class fantasy.

I feel the same. Soulshard farming just feels like.... farming. The classquests for warlock are also quite annoying imo but are also rewarded properly.

On the other hand Warlock scales better. And you will always be mad when Warlocks kills your hunter in 1on1. When you are used to the WL selfheals and survival toolkit hunter feels very limited.

However I would roll a hunter if I were you because it is a fresher experience for you.

[White Goodman1]

Played alliance warlock. Pretty good in PVE, not many warlocks in the guild, so got full tiers all the time. That was a plus. Pretty fun all around. Okay in group pvp, shit in solo pvp. Soul shard farming was ok, but them not stacking was shit, but hey you get nice mount! If I ever play vanilla again, I will not play warlock. I think UD rogue is good choice.

[ringpriest]

I only played Hunter and Lock to relatively low levels (29 for hunter, 20ish for lock before just not playing it anymore) in classic, leveling a hunter all the way only in BC (and not leveling a lock until MoP); that said, I abandoned lock both because I didn't find it very fun, and it felt like my pet was much less useful that the hunter pet (which could just be my inexperience with the class) - in short, I found hunter to be easier and more fun (which isn't to knock locks - one of my best friends IRL played a lock all through vanilla and BC, absolutely loved the class, and could solo some crazy stuff with drain-tanking).

[Dhrizzle]

It's really up to you. Warlocks have to buy grimoires to train demons' abilities. Hunter pets don't need to be trained that way, but you have to work with their talents.

To train hunter pets you need to leave your current pet at a stablemaster, go find a creature with the new ability you want, tame it, watch it fight until you learn the new ability, release it (it will attack you,) go back to the stable master, get your pet back, teach it. IIRC you need to do that for every level of abilities, not just new abilities.

[Life-Binder]

Mage



I mean warlock ...

[Tehterokkar]

It's really up to you. Warlocks have to buy grimoires to train demons' abilities. Hunter pets don't need to be trained that way, but you have to work with their talents.

You never played Vanilla/TBC did you? Pet talent tree and automatic skill leveling came in WotLK.

Before that you had to tame individual creatures around the entire fucking world, then fight 1-5 minutes with them to learn a skill, which you could then teach your main pet(if it could learn it) with training points(which you gained through leveling the pet and increasing its happiness).

[Gungnir]

There is a reason why DrakeDog is a name players remember even after 15 years, because it was one a very few warlock players winning in pvp.
Most 1vN fights people did on the dominant easy classes (rogue, hunter, shadow) involved warlocks as opponents, because it was that easy to beat a warlock.

The first time I encountered warlock players wanting do to any pvp, was way into TBC when warlocks could grind 15-20+ mobs at once and even the most unskilled warlock player could just facetank melees/casters in pvp because of balancing issues.

The class choice for PvE doesnt really matter, since the raidsize is big enough to bring everything, but PvP is not really balanced in vanilla/classic and with the awfull caster itemisation there is not even anything to hope for in late game when you are geared.

.. You didn't really look at many warlock PvP videos back in the day, did you?

Secondly, note that I said "a well played warlock". 70% of the people back then didn't know what the fuck they were doing or how to spec properly to bulk up on a classes strengths.
Warlocks are already tanky against anything but rogues, and even rogues are toast if they fuck up once against you considering we're going to be using the 1.12 patch as a base, where warlocks had gotten significant buffs.

[MatadorMedia]

Warlock has higher damage output and better sustain, but the trade off is more prep time and supporting your teammates. Hunter is lower damage but much more singular focus. Both require a degree of micromanagement and can easily solo or pvp effectively. I would say if you intend on playing by yourself, go hunter; if you want a regular raid/pvp guild, go warlock.

[Aleksej89]

Farming soul shards is 999999 times more annoying.

Ammo and pet food wasnt much of an issue.

But hunters suffered from having the worst mana pool out of all the mana classes so you were often mana starved.

[s0ul]

I played a Hunter but not to max. I decided to switch to Warrior mid-way. I went back to my Hunter in TBC and I remember buying a full bag of ammo for Zul'Aman progression run. Ran out of arrows on Zul'jin at 1%.

[Outofmana]

Farming soul shards is 999999 times more annoying.

Ammo and pet food wasnt much of an issue.

But hunters suffered from having the worst mana pool out of all the mana classes so you were often mana starved.

If you handle your shards well you don't ever have to farm soul shards, the only case I would see in which you need shards and have no farming option would be wiping continuesly on for example Cthun, which will costs you shards and there's no trash to reclear. And even then, joining an AQ20, ZG or random battleground/5man to get shards for the next raid isn't that big of a deal and only needed if you continue on C'thun for the next raid, otherwise there'd be trash to kill anyway in for example MC.

Hunter will obviously be an amazing choice if DM:North farm is possible in classic, basically setting you, and all your friends, up with enough gold to last the entirety of classic and beyond. If not though, for me a warlock has always been the most fun dps class to play; no buffing arcane intellect, no mana management, just pure bolt spamming with good-looking tier sets.

[Holydork]

If you handle your shards well you don't ever have to farm soul shards, the only case I would see in which you need shards and have no farming option would be wiping continuesly on for example Cthun, which will costs you shards and there's no trash to reclear. And even then, joining an AQ20, ZG or random battleground/5man to get shards for the next raid isn't that big of a deal and only needed if you continue on C'thun for the next raid, otherwise there'd be trash to kill anyway in for example MC.

Personally I found Warlock amazing class to play, most fun. like Outofmana said, soul shards are not that bad if you manage properly, obviously you have less bag space because of it. No need to buff but amazing utilities eg summoning, HS, SS, underwater breathing, eye of killgrog etc

[grimsern]

All these comments about people hating to buy arrows and food to pet.. Now I understand why retail went to hell.. I think believe this is something that made the hunter class more interesting.

I would pick hunter because i think its more fun with crits than dots.
The skill ceiling is endless for hunters, especially in PVP. It is hard to stand out from the rest when you play a warlock.
Hunters are also able to solo most group quests by kiting. And also to solo content like DM north, mara and LBRS.

This is a great PVP-video for inspiration

youtube.com/watch?v=2O4FA16PU44

[Gungnir]

All these comments about people hating to buy arrows and food to pet.. Now I understand why retail went to hell.. I think believe this is something that made the hunter class more interesting.

I would pick hunter because i think its more fun with crits than dots.
The skill ceiling is endless for hunters, especially in PVP. It is hard to stand out from the rest when you play a warlock.
Hunters are also able to solo most group quests by kiting. And also to solo content like DM north, mara and LBRS.

This is a great PVP-video for inspiration

youtube.com/watch?v=2O4FA16PU44

What?
Clearly you haven't looked at many warlock PvP vids if you believe that to be the case.
Hell, the entire argument is so facetious and ridiculous that it's incredible, there were pioneers in every single spec back in Vanilla.

Also, linking anything regarding non-Blizzard servers is a major no-no on this forum.

EDIT: That's also not from Vanilla, you can find PvP videos of people that are incredibly talented nowadays.
Goth and Stormx for example.

[Benedictu]

All these comments about people hating to buy arrows and food to pet.. Now I understand why retail went to hell.. I think believe this is something that made the hunter class more interesting.

There was really nothing interesting about losing a bag slot with already limited bag space. Feeding your pet would have been ok if there was generic pet food, but you had to have three different types of food and each food had to be a specific level range. There's more used bag space.

[Mikelev]

Pick a hunter.

[FelPlague]

I have decent amount of experience with Warlocks since I leveled an alt one during Vanilla and got to 60 shortly before TBC. I have very little experience with Hunters however and I'm trying to decide which one of these classes I'll go with when Classic launches.

Those of you who are familiar with both classes, feel free to answer these questions.

What is more frustrating; maintaining and farming SoulShards + spending 10 sec summoning pets (lock) or feeding/training pets and maintaining ammo (hunter)?
Which class requires the most amount of macros, keybinds and micro-management?

My intention is to do a mix of PvP and PvE and 60. And my choice on what class to roll might come down to these questions in the end.

gathering soulshards is something you have to do all the time, and keeps getting spent
gathering food for your pet and just remembering to feed it, and gathering ammo and keeping stocked is much easier.


soulshards are consumed very often and dont stack, you cant really store them in your bank very well, and need to be farmed from mobs

food you can just buy off AH and the level of the food does not matter, you dont need to farm mobs your level for the food, you can go to level 1 boars and get meat from them

ammo can be stockpiled, tons of it, all in your quiver, and in your bank, it can be bought off AH too, or vendors




so its the question of

Hunter= gold cost
Warlock= time cost

which is more important to you?

also what required more hotkeys, keybinds, macros, and micro manage? depends

hunters you need to micro manage your pet, you also have macros for them

keybinds that is just dependent on you

warlocks we have the option to sacrifice our pet, one of our main dps settups we dont even have a pet.


TLR

hunters= gold cost
Warlocks= time cost
Warlocks you can sac pet, hunters you cannot

[Gaidax]

Warlock is simply better all around. Early on Hunters are OK, even good, but they don't scale for shit damage-wise. Additionally Warlock in PvE can go without pet which is a massive boon. In PvP Warlocks are stronger as well.

That said, why play Warlock when you can play Mage? In Vanilla Mages are superior to Warlocks all around, you have major convenience with Teleport and free food/drinks, they are outright the best ranged DPS in PvE and strong in PvP - you don't need to manage pet, you don't need to manage shards and they have a shitton of threat reduction and hit innate too, which is the bane of Warlocks.

[Prozach]

I have decent amount of experience with Warlocks since I leveled an alt one during Vanilla and got to 60 shortly before TBC. I have very little experience with Hunters however and I'm trying to decide which one of these classes I'll go with when Classic launches.

Those of you who are familiar with both classes, feel free to answer these questions.

What is more frustrating; maintaining and farming SoulShards + spending 10 sec summoning pets (lock) or feeding/training pets and maintaining ammo (hunter)?
Which class requires the most amount of macros, keybinds and micro-management?

My intention is to do a mix of PvP and PvE and 60. And my choice on what class to roll might come down to these questions in the end.

I've played both classes since vanilla, one as main and on as alt, alternating between the two throughout expansions. First of all, good class choices!

If you want versatility for pve and pvp, hunter is the way to go. Especially if you intend to twink early on. Neither truly dominate in pvp at max level. But locks will beat hunters every time with SB spam in most raid content. The pet maintenance vs. shards is comparable. For both it's more about bag space than anything. Honestly, there isn't a truly 'better' class to play--I've found both to be thoroughly enjoyable and not without equal share of usefulness, challenges and rewards. However...

If I had to choose as someone who has played both equally for 14 years, I would say: warlock. And only because this is a vanilla-specific situation. You'll kill in raid dps, have no problem questing/solo-ing content and raids will love you for curses and healthstones. I only wish we had felguards back in vanilla...

EDIT: As an aside, tier 1-3 for locks looks fucking awesome if that's a factor. Not so much for hunters.

- - - Updated - - -

In Vanilla Mages are superior to Warlocks all around

lol, what? We must have been playing a different game. For MOST of vanilla content, locks were the shit. And far more fun to play.

[garicasha]

Summoning stones have REAL utility in vanilla. And no one else can banish elementals.

In PvE my understanding is that the 8 piece bonuses for hunters are godly for T1 and T2 and because there are no tokens, that makes RNG a huge factor.