Solo gameplay for Warlocks in Shadowlands

[Phunkle]

Hello there,

I have a small question regarding Warlock Gameplay in Shadowlands, specifically when it comes to the solo experience. Questing and Torgast comes to mind, I guess.

How does it feel to be a cloth ranged like Warlock in these scenarios? I'm considering switching from melee to range for the first time in years with Shadowlands. And the one thing I always enjoyed when playing melee was being able to run into the action and swing at whatever I can get to with no ramp up or anything.
With casters, it felt slower to me in general and more punishing if you are actually forced to move. I enjoyed visions on my DK way more than I did on my Warlock twink (although this is a pretty bad comparison since my DK is fully geared whereas my twink was lurking around ilvl 415).

How are your experiences on the beta with these scenarios?

[bloodwulf]

Questing in SL is essentially the same as Live for locks. Better than most cloth wearers but not as fun as melee/tanks.

Torghast is stupid fun as a caster. Both my Mage and Lock are tons of fun in there. Some of the halls have traps and floor hazards that are essentially ignored if you can pull from a range. Also just my experience but i feel the abilities you gain in Torghast are more fun as casters than melee, but that could be due to the way the classes scale with some buffs.

[Gaidax]

Well Warlock, as usual, has the luxury of a personal tank pet that trivializes 95% of anything you can possibly encounter in open world or Torghast for that matter.

Armed with that and you can solo pretty much anything aside from raid bosses and select specific 5-man challenges outside.

[enigma77]

My experience as an Afflock leveling in Beta: Pull everything, dot, dot, dot, rapture they're dead.

[Azantrox]

I leveled 4 classes on beta atm, being : ret paladin / enh shammy / destro lock / afflic lock.
Afflic lock was easiest of them all in open world to level. You don't have any downtime what so ever (even at 442 ilvl copied character) and you can completely solo every wanted poster or 3-man group quests.

In dungeons they perform really well. Dots themselves hit for a wet noodle, but you play around your ruptures really which even after the recent nerfs is still really great. I'm not talking purely from a DPS perspective, as tuning still needs to happen I think, but the general feel of the spec feels a lot better to me personally. Ramp up time is way less, making afflic a bit more viable in lower keys where everything dies fast and definitely more viable for higher keys.

Raids feel really smooth as well. I have the feeling that melee will have a harder time in Shadowlands in both raiding and m+, due to mechanics and affixes. So the afflic lock mobility and range as well as their toolkit is so much fun imho.

However, you mentioned that you prefer rapid action gameplay, so I'm not sure if a dot based class is going to be your thing. For example, as afflic lock you'll want to juggle dots on several targets while stacking drain buff and rupturing when possible. Instead of for example a ret paladin that can run in, build up HP and divine storm (oversimplified but you get what I mean). Keeping up Haunt, UA, agony, corruption, siphon life, ... on several targets is not really a "run in and swing" kind of playstyle ofc.

I believe a DK will be able to the same in most situations as an afflic lock when it comes to solo content. So just have to ask yourself what playstyle you prefer tbh.

[ydraw]

However, you mentioned that you prefer rapid action gameplay, so I'm not sure if a dot based class is going to be your thing. For example, as afflic lock you'll want to juggle dots on several targets while stacking drain buff and rupturing when possible.

Affliction is not the only spec though. IMO Destro has been the more efficient leveling spec for a number of expansions now. Nuke Nuke shadowburn repeat, and especially with focused chaos it chews through quest mobs ridiculously quickly.

[Bugg]

Well Warlock, as usual, has the luxury of a personal tank pet that trivializes 95% of anything you can possibly encounter in open world or Torghast for that matter.

Armed with that and you can solo pretty much anything aside from raid bosses and select specific 5-man challenges outside.

I asked something similar with th op in the warlock Discord. The response was that the tanking summons are pretty bad, and often die to tougher mobs. Demon skin will help, but sometimes even that fail to keep the tank alive. Now I don't have a max lv lock yet so I can't confirm either opinions, but it seems clear that opinions differ here...
Are demonology pets stronger/more resilient?

[Gaidax]

I asked something similar with th op in the warlock Discord. The response was that the tanking summons are pretty bad, and often die to tougher mobs. Demon skin will help, but sometimes even that fail to keep the tank alive. Now I don't have a max lv lock yet so I can't confirm either opinions, but it seems clear that opinions differ here...
Are demonology pets stronger/more resilient?

I leveled 50-60 in Beta and did 2 full covenant campaigns with Warlocks.

You can safely ignore that blabbering, Voidwalker is easily enough for everything you do outside. There was a grand total 1 mob that I tackled outside that rekt Voidwalker and it was some 5 man mob that literally 2-shot everything with autoattacks for some reason.

Will you eventually meet your match there? Yes, I guess, but something that would give lock a trouble in outside questing and such would be insurmountable task for 3/4 of classes to begin with.

[shadowlandsx]

I am really excited about my destro warlock imma blow stuff up so bad!!!!..

[Niratias]

I am really excited about my destro warlock imma blow stuff up so bad!!!!..

My plan as well.

[LordVargK]

I leveled 50-60 in Beta and did 2 full covenant campaigns with Warlocks.

You can safely ignore that blabbering, Voidwalker is easily enough for everything you do outside. There was a grand total 1 mob that I tackled outside that rekt Voidwalker and it was some 5 man mob that literally 2-shot everything with autoattacks for some reason.

Will you eventually meet your match there? Yes, I guess, but something that would give lock a trouble in outside questing and such would be insurmountable task for 3/4 of classes to begin with.

How many mobs did you let your Voidwalker tank? And what about the felguard? Do you have the feeling that the tank pets perform better than in BfA leveling? And which itemlevel did you have while leveling?

[Gaidax]

How many mobs did you let your Voidwalker tank? And what about the felguard? Do you have the feeling that the tank pets perform better than in BfA leveling? And which itemlevel did you have while leveling?

BFA mythic raiding item level (I think it was ilvl ~130ish, except neck ofc), leveled by questlines mostly. That gear was relevant until like level 56-ish, already had an odd upgrade at level 52 from some rare in first zone. By like 57 I replaced most of pieces with greens/blues and shit you just get as quest rewards.

As for Voidwalker tanking - there was never enough mobs to be of a threat - I imagine if you somehow manage to gather half a zone it might be an issue, but there just were not that much mobs there anyway and you'd just rekt them anyway with Infernal. I don't know about Felguard, I leveled as Destruction, but really there was literally no challenge leveling, even rares I met on the way, except for that one rare that hit like a frikkin' raid boss for some reason.

Outside that one, I don't even think I had Voidwalker dying at all or maybe like once, which is whatever because you resummon another instantly anyway.

[Dimad]

My experience as an Afflock leveling in Beta: Pull everything, dot, dot, dot, rapture they're dead.

This right here. I did try destro and demo but levelibg wise afflictions dot and forget worked great.

[LordVargK]

BFA mythic raiding item level (I think it was ilvl ~130ish, except neck ofc), leveled by questlines mostly. That gear was relevant until like level 56-ish, already had an odd upgrade at level 52 from some rare in first zone. By like 57 I replaced most of pieces with greens/blues and shit you just get as quest rewards.

As for Voidwalker tanking - there was never enough mobs to be of a threat - I imagine if you somehow manage to gather half a zone it might be an issue, but there just were not that much mobs there anyway and you'd just rekt them anyway with Infernal. I don't know about Felguard, I leveled as Destruction, but really there was literally no challenge leveling, even rares I met on the way, except for that one rare that hit like a frikkin' raid boss for some reason.

Outside that one, I don't even think I had Voidwalker dying at all or maybe like once, which is whatever because you resummon another instantly anyway.

Thank you for the insight!
I was planning on going Affliction for the expansion, because I was Destru in all of BfA. But if the VW performs worse on Affliction, I might go back to Destruction, hearing it worked out for you so well.

[Aurosh]

This right here. I did try destro and demo but levelibg wise afflictions dot and forget worked great.

Affli is just op when you outgear stuff. Always was. But that slowed down a lot. Affli is usually the best leveling spec for quite some time. At 56+ the other specs should be close because even Affli has a break point where dots arent enough to kill them fast.