Out of curiosity, how did warlocks perform best in vanilla and TBC?

[Dhrizzle]

Pet part is an exaggeration, yes early on pets couldn't keep up and would despawn, but that was fixed before BWL was even out iirc. Past that, pets could keep up with even epic ground mounts so long as they didn't get dazed. The real annoying part was flight points, pets despawning and having to basically go through the two - three minute summon pet and buff up ritual to start farming shards. Once the lock lvl 50 quest was put in though, you could pick up an abyssal shard trinket which lessened the pain of that all the way to WotLK. The push back problem wasn't warlock specific either, every caster had that issue.

Shard relief came in TBC when they gave every tick of DS a chance to generate a shard. If necessary you could duel a pally and just drain whilst he healed.

[Deleted]

Now PvP is a whole nother beast. We had our our periods of extreme gimpness but we also has periods of insane OP'ness. Here are some highlights:

- Will of the forsaken was a flat 20 sec fear immunity instead of removing it once, UD rogues were LITERALLY impossible to kill.
- Fear and seduce being on separate timers from the start making us CC gods briefly.
- Drakedog and his videos making "seduce/SB" legendary. There was a period when I could kill fresh 60's in greens with a shadowbolt crit and a death coil / alt. two SB's. All whilst they were seduced.
- Using the felhunter and spell lock correct would make you awesome against mages and any other casters, but it was a bit less common and took more effort.
- PvP really had the stone/scissor/paper feel back then. Rogues ruined our lives, we ruined mages lives, them warriors and warriors rogues (that's a small circle I remember at least).
- Never wanting to use shadow burn or soulfire because they cost a soulshard.
- Matter of fact never wanting to use any spell that cost a soulshard.
- Reverting to imp after you run out of soulshards and your pet died.
- Fucking soul shards.

All in all I remember pvp as being a lot more fun than raiding for the warlock class (overall raiding was more enjoyable just for the experience though).

- - - Updated - - -

The one thing people who didn't play in vanilla will never know about though... FARMING SOUL SHARDS.

Filling up every single free bag slot you had with shards before raids or long BG sessions. Seriously what the hell were Blizzard thinking on that one? xD

[Horrid Crow]

that may theoretically be the case but you forgot one thing.
Rolling Ignites.

Which didn't work in a lot of raids because of fire immune enemies and bosses which made fire spec useless until the end of vanilla.

Warlocks excelled in PvP and were often compared to raid bosses in terms of difficulty in beating.
They were poor in PvE in vanilla, but the best in Burning Crusade.

[ciggy]

Warlocks actually outscaled Mages with Naxx gear in Vanilla...and when you can tap for mana it doesn't really matter what your costs are. Anyone who says locks weren't top-three competitive PvE DPS in Vanilla is just wrong.

were two locks in the vanilla guild i was in, me and another guy. We were both sm/ruin. He was always 1 or 2 on the dps meters, every single raid. I was 4-8 depending on the level of drunkenness on my part. I take that back, he was 12th one raid. I had my gf at the time sending him some pretty filthy cybers, to this day he hasn't forgiven me for that. hehe.

[Asrialol]

Which didn't work in a lot of raids because of fire immune enemies and bosses which made fire spec useless until the end of vanilla.

Warlocks excelled in PvP and were often compared to raid bosses in terms of difficulty in beating.
They were poor in PvE in vanilla, but the best in Burning Crusade.

Wasn't Fire just not popular in MC/BWL/Ony content? At least I remember Fire being popular in AQ/Naxx times, as well as ZG.

[Horrid Crow]

Wasn't Fire just not popular in MC/BWL/Ony content? At least I remember Fire being popular in AQ/Naxx times, as well as ZG.

It wasn't viable in those raids because enemies (all of them) were either very fire resistant or completely immune.
MC for a Mage was nothing more than spamming frostbolts.

They removed the immunity to certain magic schools after vanilla.
AQ/Naxx and ZG didn't have fire immune enemies because the theme wasn't fire.

[Deleted]

I think with all the dmg boosts from specs and debuffs I think our Shadowbolt had like an additional 64% or 67% dmg increase..which was sick
How to do big DEEPS with warlock in TBC - Bind every key to shadowbolt and faceroll.

[Qwesar]

Hi I am a dedicated theorycrafter. I maintain spreadsheets of the best possible raid composition in Classic Wow, TBC and WotLK, including Class, Spec, Race and Professions and even more detailed info like buff assignment + Soulstone, Earth Shield and battle rez assignments. Anyways of course it changes from encounter/patch. However in Classic WoW I ranked Warlock the best DPS role. I have 20 out of 40 raid members as Gnome Warlocks. I find the Soulstone incredibly powerful (even more powerful than Battle Rez because it can be applied before a fight and used without hesitation). On commonly bugged Classic boss encounters, Soulstone is one of the few spells to alleviate unavoidable deaths. Warlocks had a lot of stackable utility (soulstone, imp blood pact, healthstone, felhunter/VW survivability, range DPS, AOE, self heals, life tap, fear, banish, enslave demon, curse of the elements, summoning). Warlocks were slightly behind Mages and Rogues in DPS, but miles ahead in utility and survivability. Range DPS was also a huge advantage as melee took tons of damage and also had to be out of melee range at times. More than 2 hunters or mages just seems like a utility waste and once those classes are dead, they stay dead. When it comes to 40 raid members, raid utility and raid survivability was vastly more impactful than one player's DPS/HPS. I really like Warlocks (utility DPS), Druids (bRez,innervate) and Paladins (buffs/aura).

Best 40 Classic Raid Composition
Gnome Warlock 20
NightElf Druid 6
Human Paladin 5
Dwarf Warrior 4
Human Priest 2
Gnome Mage 1-2
NightElf Hunter 1-2
Human Rogue 1
Total ------ 40

TBC was a different story.
Warlocks were insanely powerful individually, however, not more powerful utility than Elemental Shaman. In TBC, Heroism didn't hit you with a debuff and could be cast in sucession, so giving the group 30% haste x 5 for 40 sec was insanely powerful. Shaman stacking was easy mode with a bunch of totems adding to the utility and Self Rez just in case. Lightning Bolt and Chain Heal death machines.
My TBC perfect raid had 1 Dest Warlock, 9 Ele Shaman and 7 Resto Shaman, 1 Prot Warrior, 2 Prot Paladin, 1 Shadow Priest, 1 Disc Priest, 1 Holy Paladin, 1 Balance Druid, 1 Frost Mage (yes Frost!, Frost Mages were good for soloing boss adds and for surviving and did on par dmg).

[Deleted]

Easy - in TBC destruction warlocks worked exactly like mages. You spammed a nuke. Zero rapmup times, perfect for target switching, high single target dps made it even better and great for bosses.

Moreover, with Seed of Corruption we had just about the best AOE in the game. Because they exploded off ALL damage, so basically they exploded instantly.

In fact it was so good a warlock was all but mandatory for the hidden Karazan boss lol

How things have changed

[Gaidax]

Vanilla I do not know, I was a filthy healer paladin back then. TBC - DS/Ruin was very strong eclipsed only by glaives rogues.

It was also insanely easy to play - it was literally Shadowbolt spam, tap once in a while and refresh curse on target, depending on what you were assigned to.

[Moggie]

Warlock did pretty poorly at the start of the game, not really beacause of damage (although Life tap not scaling, DoTs not scaling, and the 8 then 16 debuffs limitation were hindering us). The main problem until Naxxramas was threat generation, especially for those of us who were playing horde. I remember DPS Broodlord Lashlayer with my wand, because of constant aggro resets (literally every boss in BWL had some kind of aggro wipe mechanic). The 30 pts Mastery Demonologist Imp bonus which reduced threat generated by 30% did help. The fact that aggro reset kinda became more scare during Naxx and AQ allowed us to be pretty decent: we could spec either SM/Ruin or better yet 9/21/21 (Imp Life tap, Demo Sac, Ruin) and benefit from the pet res bug. Still rolling ignite firemages and well geared rogues and warriors were better.
At the start of TBC Aff was king (Enchant/tailor + Affli, to get the sick crafted pants and feets), until T6 where FnB/Demo Sac started outscaling Aff and shadowbolt spamming became better. All in all warlocks were in a very good spot for most of TBC.

This, although Warlocks didn't scale at all until 2.0. Then, you didn't use Life Tap, you used Dark Pact. (Pet -> Lock mana transfer) Nobody remembers the uproar and 100s of pages when they tried changing Dark Pact from Spirit to...Int? SP? I don't remember which stat they tried changing it to that was reverted and put in at 3.0 for WotLK.

Warlocks were Summon, HS, CoElements, CoRecklessness bots for PVE for nearly the entirety of Classic. PvP reign of terror came midway. I remember during Classic, joining a raid of all Warlocks and downed Onyxia which was a pretty big deal at the time. A time when Health Funnel could be used on other pets.

[Deleted]

Warlock did pretty poorly at the start of the game, not really beacause of damage (although Life tap not scaling, DoTs not scaling, and the 8 then 16 debuffs limitation were hindering us). The main problem until Naxxramas was threat generation, especially for those of us who were playing horde. I remember DPS Broodlord Lashlayer with my wand, because of constant aggro resets (literally every boss in BWL had some kind of aggro wipe mechanic). The 30 pts Mastery Demonologist Imp bonus which reduced threat generated by 30% did help. The fact that aggro reset kinda became more scare during Naxx and AQ allowed us to be pretty decent: we could spec either SM/Ruin or better yet 9/21/21 (Imp Life tap, Demo Sac, Ruin) and benefit from the pet res bug. Still rolling ignite firemages and well geared rogues and warriors were better.
At the start of TBC Aff was king (Enchant/tailor + Affli, to get the sick crafted pants and feets), until T6 where FnB/Demo Sac started outscaling Aff and shadowbolt spamming became better. All in all warlocks were in a very good spot for most of TBC.

... experimenting in BWL with DSac VW to save the healers mana thanks to the % health regen and pulling aggro on Lashlayer thanks to it.
Threat was such bullshit.
We force awarded the Sandreaver Fetish to another Lock cause he couldn't keep his fingers still till the infamous 5 stacks of Sunder Armor.

[Livnthedream]

Hi I am a dedicated theorycrafter. I maintain spreadsheets of the best possible raid composition in Classic Wow, TBC and WotLK, including Class, Spec, Race and Professions and even more detailed info like buff assignment + Soulstone, Earth Shield and battle rez assignments. Anyways of course it changes from encounter/patch. However in Classic WoW I ranked Warlock the best DPS role. I have 20 out of 40 raid members as Gnome Warlocks. I find the Soulstone incredibly powerful (even more powerful than Battle Rez because it can be applied before a fight and used without hesitation). On commonly bugged Classic boss encounters, Soulstone is one of the few spells to alleviate unavoidable deaths. Warlocks had a lot of stackable utility (soulstone, imp blood pact, healthstone, felhunter/VW survivability, range DPS, AOE, self heals, life tap, fear, banish, enslave demon, curse of the elements, summoning). Warlocks were slightly behind Mages and Rogues in DPS, but miles ahead in utility and survivability. Range DPS was also a huge advantage as melee took tons of damage and also had to be out of melee range at times. More than 2 hunters or mages just seems like a utility waste and once those classes are dead, they stay dead. When it comes to 40 raid members, raid utility and raid survivability was vastly more impactful than one player's DPS/HPS. I really like Warlocks (utility DPS), Druids (bRez,innervate) and Paladins (buffs/aura).

Best 40 Classic Raid Composition
Gnome Warlock 20
NightElf Druid 6
Human Paladin 5
Dwarf Warrior 4
Human Priest 2
Gnome Mage 1-2
NightElf Hunter 1-2
Human Rogue 1
Total ------ 40

TBC was a different story.
Warlocks were insanely powerful individually, however, not more powerful utility than Elemental Shaman. In TBC, Heroism didn't hit you with a debuff and could be cast in sucession, so giving the group 30% haste x 5 for 40 sec was insanely powerful. Shaman stacking was easy mode with a bunch of totems adding to the utility and Self Rez just in case. Lightning Bolt and Chain Heal death machines.
My TBC perfect raid had 1 Dest Warlock, 9 Ele Shaman and 7 Resto Shaman, 1 Prot Warrior, 2 Prot Paladin, 1 Shadow Priest, 1 Disc Priest, 1 Holy Paladin, 1 Balance Druid, 1 Frost Mage (yes Frost!, Frost Mages were good for soloing boss adds and for surviving and did on par dmg).

Too much effort man.

[Nadiru]

In classic, in PvE, Warlocks were relegated to raid utility and fight-specific mechanics. SM/Ruin didn't pull enough DPS to warrant bringing them on a numbers basis, but healthstones were extremely everyone's shit, as were summons. In TBC, Warlocks got hella DPS added to their toolkit, though I suspect this was an oversight on the part of the dev team.

[Kagthul]

PvP in tbc entailed us putting up dots and then casting drain life in a desperate attempt to kill us. Drain life and a full round of dots including siphon life (it was a 30 second dot then not a glyph and UA did not exist yet) was usually enough to keep us alive and even have our health go up despite them dpsing us. Then they nerfed Drain life and made it affected by mortal strike effects which was a 50% reduction in all healing done by it if up.

Uhh.. wat? UA was most definitely added in the TBC pre-patch meng.

It just wasn't used in Cancerbox, i mean.. uh, Arena, because you couldn't take it and Soul Link, and the 50% damage shared from Soul Link was absolutely necessary to survive.

[Straamibuu]

I'd completely forgotten about non imps requiring soul shards.

In a way it was quite cool to feel you'd stolen a part of someone's soul (especially in pvp) and using it to fuel an almighty soul fireball of pure doom.

[BannedForViews]

in TBC we were hands down top dps hitting one button. It was glorious.

- - - Updated - - -

Uhh.. wat? UA was most definitely added in the TBC pre-patch meng.

It just wasn't used in Cancerbox, i mean.. uh, Arena, because you couldn't take it and Soul Link, and the 50% damage shared from Soul Link was absolutely necessary to survive.

Soul link has always been 20% shared.

[Kagthul]

Soul link has always been 20% shared.

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Soul_Link

Incorrect. It was 50% for a large chunk of Vanilla (and, i mistakenly thought, until Patch 2.1) and then 30% for a great deal of time as well.

[FelPlague]

Wtf is with this 3 year necro. And suddenly everyone thinking it's new >_> did no one notice the dates?.
I still don't get why people necro

[BannedForViews]

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Soul_Link

Incorrect. It was 50% for a large chunk of Vanilla (and, i mistakenly thought, until Patch 2.1) and then 30% for a great deal of time as well.

It was 20% through all of TBC