Warlock Raiding Fact Check

[Woobels]

Not sure why people are claiming you auto-lose to Mages and Rogues (???) automatically. If properly geared you'll beat rogues and the non-ignite mages in Naxx on a lot of fights, Warlocks are definitely not in a lower tier than those later in vanilla.

[Pieterman]

1. Your raid dps is fine, and it doesn't really matter

2. A couple, just whoever joins the guild

3. You tend to carry them around anyways. I found it fun to help out in a unique way

4. False it's easily affordable

5. I don't recall there being any notoriously difficult pieces. Briarwood Reed was hard for me

[Outofmana]

So, come Classic, I plan to main warlock as a raiding character. I feel it's a class niche that will be less flocked to than the usual suspects for dps (mage, rogue and warrior).

However, I'd love to have some questions answered directly by people who played Warlock back then personally. I played Rogue back then and have virtually no memory of what Warlocks went through. I want to understand what kind of experience and requirements I'd be signing up for.

1;

1. We do scale well but in stacked guilds this means after the MC (In MC era you'll find yourself below the tanks) era you finally get to compete with mages while melee, especially horde will tower over you in every way, I found MC to be especially weak as a lock, even in later tiers, doing a curse in a 20second gehennas fight = 1 GCD loss in such a short fight that it hurts your DPS to no-end. Recent sub30min MC run done in AQ tier gear when locks outscale mages, yes mages are even lower. Doesn't really matter, as in vanilla I find you compete vs others in your class, not neccesairly other classes at all, as not everyone brings all utility anyway. Competing against locks currently from other guilds is where I got my 'motivation" from and as long as every class is needed which it is in vanilla mostly, it's no big deal. Might be way better on alliance, without windfury, think casters make a leap there. Also in Naxx a stronger caster roster is often prefered for the final bosses anyway, naxx and AQ40 often make your casterroster bigger. Every pure DPS class is a good pick in vanilla in any case.

2. Depends on what caster roster you end up in, but when your mage roster is very strong, you'll often find locks won't get more than 3 spots (CoS/CoE/CoR indeed). I face this problem currently which is having a weak lock roster because of it, and raiding often with only 2 locks, meaning no CoS, and a shit raid overall for yourself. Most guilds with a 2-3man lock roster will not bother even with a shadowpriest (or can't find a person willing to play one) just to save up debuffslots etc so don't count on having one. There's never a _need_ for more than 3 locks, Garr is easily offtanked and ...yeah that's basically it. Meaning most proper guilds will always aim for a 3 lock raidsetup, that is before roster strenght comes into play, if you end up with 5 good locks, they'll simply take a mage spot. (Especially on horde, where groups with a shaman are often even filled with warrior/melee alts before they take another lock), again less of an issue on alliance. I must say though my guild often goes for performance over player happyness and I don't think you will see a 2 lock roster in 99.9% of guilds, and most will be a minimum of 3, since without CoS I don't see a warlock player enjoy raiding whatsoever, so again it'll most likely be a non-issue.

Paladins likewise, Blessing of Kings/Wis+Might/Salv and in later tiers it'd be stupid not to take a fourth for BoLight. In an overflowing raidroster Paladins might end up 3/4 spots max too, so it's not lock exclusive. At least there's always 3 spots, and truly required ones.


3. I never had to farm for shards ever except maybe once or twice these last few years, and that's because we had an alt 2-raid wipenight on C'thun (which means I have no trash to get new shards on afterwards before next raidday of tries on C'thun, as no trash respawns next day). Shards are no inconvenience whatsover, think of it as healer mana, something to keep you busy during raid and to manage. Example; You know that after MC there will be onyxia which will mean you need to summon a lot of slackers so at the near end of MC, make sure you drain every mob already so you have a fullshardbag traveling to onyxia (and other bags why not), when Onyxia is over you then even have so many shards left that you can just turn up to next raid day as it is, summon the 10 slackers at the entrance, and then drain again on raid trash. The only problem people wanting healthstones @ Loatheb or something, but that's the very end of it all and you can again prepare for it on the trash before. It just needs a bit of planning, like a DPS warrior who plans his trinkets over a BWL run in advance in his head.

4. Little bit less expensive and you can sell mats and help others to make it even less expensive for them. I personally never cared for the hassle and bought the regular epic mount.

5. Very easy, as for Briarwood reed you could even join Rend-Runs, meaning even faster farm. Only annoying thing was Turban for me, and in the 'new age' it'll probably be reserved by a lot of people making an UBRS raid for either guildies or friends. but that won't even be out yet at the start I recon (or it will be then someone tell me please). Comparitively to other classes, I found getting a caster preraid BIS the easiest by far. Healerspots are often insta filled for their most needed instance ( StratUD), A paladin or Shaman additionally is extremely annoying to get your scholo libram/totem (and when it does come out later, 10000 paladins will try to run it at once), and melee has simply a lot more competition on rend items and whatnot.

Overall I find a warlock the most fun class/caster to play. My mage alt is simply way more annoying to play these days, having to buff arcane intellect while raid wants to move, chaining trash, having no time to drink, being half oom on trash/bosses trying to get drink-ticks in blablabla, simply lifetap as a lock is the good life, you will actually enjoy the pure speed of pulling current meleeteams will do while mages a drinking and crying in the background far behind the pack.

[The-loon]

So, come Classic, I plan to main warlock as a raiding character. I feel it's a class niche that will be less flocked to than the usual suspects for dps (mage, rogue and warrior).

However, I'd love to have some questions answered directly by people who played Warlock back then personally. I played Rogue back then and have virtually no memory of what Warlocks went through. I want to understand what kind of experience and requirements I'd be signing up for.

1;
Everything I've seen says that Warlocks start out raiding with less dps than the other Big Three classes, but that they start to scale extremely well later on. When do Locks actually start pulling ahead in dps (raid tier wise) and where do they actually land in the end on the overall dps totem pole at the end of the road?

2;
Raid composition. Generally speaking I know that raids required at the bare minimum one warlock for curse of elements, healthstones, summons, etc. But how many fights actually wanted more than this, for banish strats etc? Was it typical to see very few locks? Or more like 2-4?

3;
People like to be anecdotal about the "good ol' days". I hear horror stories about the Soul Shard farming pre-raids and that people spent 40 shards right from the get-go to make every member a healthstone... Then went back outside to grind even more shards for themselves. Was this actually true? Or is it just a fairy tale situation that very rarely occured?

4;
Warlock Epic Mount questline. I've heard that if you actually factored all of the reagents and steps involved in getting the class mount it actually ended up even more expensive than just getting normal epic riding in the first place? True, false, or dependent on server economy and pop?

5;
How difficult/expensive/time consuming was it to get geared for pre-raid as a lock? Any more or less than anyone else? Or about the same in general?

Thanks for reading, first-off. Any and all replies are appreciated. I value the opinions of people I can interract with and have dialog with vastly more than just videos and contradictory heresay. There's a lot said about Vanilla. It's hard to know what's worth paying attention to.

Warlocks main since forever and long history in private servers here too.

1: This was the case due to limited access to spell hit. Traditionally Warlocks starting to really excel in end of BWL gear/Bloodvine set from ZG. However, with the itemization not being progressive Warlocks will actually have access to some pretty amazing gear from day 1 that you wouldn't have if you say came form the private server community. Here's an example of the now BiS preraid neck for phase 1: https://classicdb.ch/?item=12103

2: Unless youre doing some crazy speed run strat like the parse here: https://legacyplayers.com/Raids/View...xp=0&upl=47613 I'd say most guilds brings 3 warlocks, 1 for each curse. Some guilds use banish strats on Garr and would bring more but its 100000% not necessary. I can't think of any other boss strats where Warlocks provided some form of additional utility.

3: With the original debuff limit of 8 debuffs it was very difficult to have drain soul stay on the target. Once this limit increased to 16 drain soul stayed on far easier and therefore getting shards on trash was easy if you were getting low. Since the debuff limit will be 16 form day 1 I think this will be less of an issue. Shards are definitely a part of the class that isn't glamorous but its not horrible in my opinion. Furthermore, many classes wouldn't want to use hearthstones if they are true min/maxing. They'd use things that share the CD like demonic runes instead. Having to give out 40 hearthstones seems unrealistic in any raid environment; at least in all my experiences.

4: You will need some mats that require a person to craft items for you or buy them off the AH. These will be economy dependent but aren't anything crazy. These items are: 3 Black Dragonscales, 1 Arcanite Bar, 2 Elixir of Shadow power, 25 Dark iron Ore, 6 Large Brilliant Shards. I'd estimate these to be around 400g total (high end estimate) or less. On top of that you need 3 items off a vendor that sell for 250g total (notes these items are reusbale/tradable and can save money here) and 1 additional item that gets consumed which vendors also for 150g. TL;DR total estimated cost for this quest chain is 800 gold however you could buy a turn in service and save a portion of the 250g spent on the reusable items. Overall it's cheaper than a typical mount however you won't have access to this chain until phase 2 FYI.

5: True preraid BiS in phase 1 will be time consuming for all classes due to the itemization not being dynamic. Notable pain in the ass items for Warlocks now will be the pattern to craft our chest piece (Robe of the Void). This will be a BoE pattern from day 1 now which is nice but has a 1% drop from Darkmaster Gandling in Scholo. Expect to pay a pretty penny for this chest and farm demonic runes for a while or get lucky. The now BiS neck is off an arena boss in BRD (Star of Mysteria). There are 6 possible bosses that will spawn and this item has about a 20% chance to drop if you get the boss you need. Same as above goes for the now BiS belt (Ban'Thok Sash) which is off a different arena boss (Ok'thor) and has a 16% drop chance off him.

[Kalmakk]

Now that we know what content is going to be in the game during phase 1 is there a website out there with has an accurate list of pre-raid BiS options and their sources? That would be super helpful regardless of class.

[Drosul]

Now that we know what content is going to be in the game during phase 1 is there a website out there with has an accurate list of pre-raid BiS options and their sources? That would be super helpful regardless of class.

http://www.wowclassicbis.com/

Seems to be the site you're looking for.... unless you're an enhancement shaman or ret.

I don't know for certain if it's 100% accurate, but it seems likely.

[The-loon]

http://www.wowclassicbis.com/

Seems to be the site you're looking for.... unless you're an enhancement shaman or ret.

I don't know for certain if it's 100% accurate, but it seems likely.

lots of errors for all classes on this. Many of the BiS items aren't going to even be in game during phase 1 be careful.

Off top of m head for Warlocks mistakes on that site are:

Weapon: Witchblade
Neck: Star of Mystaria
Back: Spitecaster Cape
Belt: Ban'Thok Sash
Boots: Omnicast Boots (Listed ones won't be in game during phase 1)

[Low Hanging Fruit]

The +hit is what really hurts Warlocks early on. Other classes can get a good chunk of it though talents and then do pretty good as gear progresses. Once ZG hits and you can fix a lot of these issues but that isn't phase 1 and will take time to get the items upon release of the ZG phase as well.

Then your curses are going to be able helping other classes out more than yourself most if not all the time. Just how it is and it is worth it. It really isn't that big of a deal as long as you pull your weight for what your class and gear can pull. I mean think about it you put up a curse that increases 6 peoples damage by 10% with elements. I mean that damage is YOURS but its going to another players bar. You are very important to bring. You bring that damage.

Honestly the most annoying thing will be people asking for healthstones and honestly just give them to the tanks and maybe someone that is doing a job outside of the normal bubble so mistakes can be fixed. Oh and yourself because I mean.. you... right..

Summoning before a raid might piss you off too if your raid is lazy. Which if you find yourself having to summon a ton of people all the time than they are probably assholes anyway. Sure sometimes someone is late and you summon them. Maybe someone steps out and you summon the replacement and that is fine. But summon 30ish people before a raid.. again.. tell them to fuck off.

[shise]

I'm sure this happened, I would've rather bought 40 major healing potions off the AH and handed them out than create 40 health stones. Today people are responsible for their own consumables, any guild asking their warlocks to supply them with health stones will probably be told to go fuck themselves.

W00t. HS´s are still a must in a raid, they do not share a CD with pots.

[Overdispersion]

lots of errors for all classes on this. Many of the BiS items aren't going to even be in game during phase 1 be careful.

Off top of m head for Warlocks mistakes on that site are:

Weapon: Witchblade
Neck: Star of Mystaria
Back: Spitecaster Cape
Belt: Ban'Thok Sash
Boots: Omnicast Boots (Listed ones won't be in game during phase 1)

You're wrong about the boots, but yeah that's def not the bis list for warlocks.

[Villentretenmerth]

There won't be min-maxing like that except for some retardo-guilds who want to clear everything Day1.

You can clear MC with like 20 people. 98% of Guilds will just take whoever signs up. If you are a active player you will get a raidspot, no matter what class you play!

[Vyomesh2]

A small tip in advance on Soul Shard farming.
If you are Alliance, then head to Duskwood and go to Raven Hill.(Horde can this too, but it's closer to SW for alli and a bit far for Horde)
Use your Detect Invisibility spell and you'll see a bunch of low level ghosts(lv45ish i believe) which is at the cutoff point for getting Shards. Easy Shard farming. Just throw a DoT on there and spam Drain Soul. Bag full of Shards in notime.

[Overdispersion]

W00t. HS´s are still a must in a raid, they do not share a CD with pots.

Yeah, with four warlocks you're gonna have about 10 stones per member each raid night and unless you're an idiot who pop your healthstone as soon as you dip to 50% hp those 10 stones are gonna be as substiantial as any other minor buff your guild's gonna force you to get for raiding.

[Prozach]

You can clear MC with like 20 people.

lol, ok. Maybe if they're AQ40/Naxx geared. I remember often running a few people short of the full 40 but when you first get in there? No fucking way...

[Kersey]

3;
People like to be anecdotal about the "good ol' days". I hear horror stories about the Soul Shard farming pre-raids and that people spent 40 shards right from the get-go to make every member a healthstone... Then went back outside to grind even more shards for themselves. Was this actually true? Or is it just a fairy tale situation that very rarely occured?

Sadly, my favorite place to farm soulshards will not be out until phase 3. I will definitely need to find another easy access area thick with level 52ish mobs.

[Charge me Doctor]

Warlocks use to be the best before one-hander normalization, then melee in general started taking ahead. Then in naxx they were kinda outclassed by stacking mages for ignite.

Soulshard farming wasn't that bad, it's tedious, but when they patched in an ability to get them from trash it became kinda easy.

[Hinastorm]

I can answer question 2.

One lock = one tank for the rock elemental boss in MC, and you needed eight IIRC

I dont remember how geared our warriors were, but its really not that hard to tank 2-3 with tab sunder tab sunder tab sunder. Not that most warriors will be able to hold aggro on more than 1 mob.

[Rayaleith]

Classic raids are very easy. That means there is a good chance you will have an spriest in the raid. That means very good dps.