Thinking of leveling a Warlock alt, which spec should i choose?

[scrynlock]

When it comes to Mythic, Destro is the most useful to have in raid.

Affliction puts up good numbers on fights with lots of adds, but that's all add scum damage that nobody cares about anyway.

Demo is solid on two fights, but is subpar on the rest. Unless the next tier randomly has a bunch of target dummy fights it seems destro is the spec to focus on at the moment. Should be noted that its a lot better in normal and heroic where there is less movement and adds.

With the game designed how it is right now its important to focus on the most useful spec and power that one up. At least in my opinion and experience.

demo is playable/good on every fight.. except probably ilgynoth during prog

[Deleted]

Demonology is fine for mostly everything from raiding (not so good on Il'gynoth, but you can make it), WQ, PvP, Mythic+, with the right talent builds (you'll switch a lot) and tactics. Destruction may be better in some areas, but the real reason you see so many people recommending it is that it's just easier to play. Some people seem to (still) find it fun, but its whole 4-button deal with the occasional garnish of other abilities gets absurdly boring after an expansion or two. The removal of baseline shadowburn only hastens Destro's fate into becoming a completely brain-dead spec.

[iddqd]

Destro is by far the most fun spec, imo I love the idea of affliction, but in practice it is *so boring*, poop some dots on people and use drain life, woooo... Demo is decent but lacks a bit of oomph for me. Destro is just rapid firing death and destruction at your enemies and backdraft plus havoc ensure it never gets boring.

...the demo artefact is amazing though <3

Im mostly with you here, i also love the playstyle of destruction - the only thing poorly handled is the artifact ability imho. Boring portals that shoot single targets over time, this is just... meh.

[Pokeypenguin]

demo is playable/good on every fight.. except probably ilgynoth during prog

Demo is the best on neth and ele which are the two easiest fights and the least important from a progression standpoint.

Below destro on Cenarius, Xavius, Dragons, il'gynoth

About equal on Ursoc.

But here's the thing, besides the fact I don't care for the new demo spec as its basicly affliction with your pets acting as dots, I will always play what I think will be the most effective in raids. Last expansion I played mostly Demo, this expansion it looks like it will be Destro. With the way legendaries and AP works the ability to switch between fights goes down with each passing day, so to be the most effective you should focus and empower the best spec overall.

Both demo and affliction have crippling downsides that make them not great OVERALL choices even if they shine on certain situations, and while destro is not as amazing as fire mage, it has the least chance among the three specs of seriously underperforming on any given fight.

[Shodan30]

Hey, so im thinking of leveling a Warlock as my alt. I have never played Warlock above level 60, so i have very little knowledge about the class and specs. Im in no rush to gear him for raiding but i want to raid on him eventually. Which spec would you recommend?

Destro is the fastest spec for leveling, and is fun. Summon voidwalker, target mob, sic void on target, nuke. repeat. get to the point that you can do this with several mobs at a time using aoe spells. things die in 2-3 chaos bolts max. Affliction is slower cause you have to wait for your dots to tick. demo...cant really comment, its my least played spec.

[Narwal]

Warlocks are worse than all other pure dps classes and most hybrids, stop defending blizzard failure on this class, they fucked up.
All specs feel unfinished and the only somewhat playable spec is destro but the rng of it is everywhere, fire mages can at least control the insta pyro procs with fireblasts.
How can we control how much chaos bolt will hit when you need to kill that add asap? If you are unlucky and chaos bolt hits 300k instead of 500k that add won't die and you will have cast another 2s chaos bolt or 2 incinerates.

They removed baseline skills that are important to the mobility and fit the spec perfectly because they were out of ideas for talents and why not remove baseline skills and place them as talents and then get a payday. For example portal and shadowburn needs to be baseline.

I think my problem with Locks, isn't even the tuning. It's that every specialization has an apparent niche and is considerably weaker in anything but their niche. This means for optimal play you have to constantly change your specialization. Now, I realize that is a subjective matter, if I don't like having to spec based on scenario I should have rolled something else. I made the right assumption that warlocks would be under-represented, which is why i chose to role it this expansion. I just made the wrong assumption that Lock would be like every other class and have a "raid spec". Most other classes seem to have an apparent "dominant" spec for "most" situations that people can count on for raiding. I think the closest to lock in this regard is rogue, as they clearly have a stronger aoe/cleave spec and a strong ST spec.

To those who say demo is good on most fights, hell, even the fights we know demo is probably better on... are you ignoring or being catered to in your raid setups? There are instances in raid, say on Ursoc, where I understand the mechanics of being within what, 25 yards, to absorb roars. However, the raid leader prefers everyone stand in melee of the boss because he really doesn't understand how warlocks are punished by movement apparently. I'm just curious if those parsing well, are actually following raid movements, or are being allowed to cheat to minimize their movement so that their dps can keep up with other classes that can do it on the move.

I was watching a stream and saw a lock in top 5 on first phase of elereth, a portion of the fight I would not expect to see them there. I then paid attention to where they were, he was standing in the middle of the room, on his own, basically ignoring mechanics. If they were to get targetted with the mechanic that everyone moves from one side of the room to the other on, it'd basically just be a wipe. I also had a raid leader at the beginning of this tier who understood locks and would cater my job to not having to move or do anything important in the raid. Just to dps near the top of the raid, but not any better than many other specs who can do it while doing mechanics.

Ultimately I guess it all comes down to our mobility. I don't think portal is going to change us that much, it's too long a cool down. What needs to happen is our dps rotation needs to include an element, on a relatively short cooldown, that is a positive to our rotation, that is instant such that we can time our rotation to cast our instants when we have to move. On Ursoc, I'm doing this with lifetap, but if you move too often, the lifetap isn't necessary and I mean, lifetap hurts our rotation doesn't really help it (unless you're oom).

[Nadiru]

Well, here's the fun part: Warlock specs are good at one thing, so you'll get to put points equally into all three specs if you want to do more than one thing. Affliction for leveling/WQs, Destro for dungeons and raids, Demo for pvp.

[Pokeypenguin]

I think my problem with Locks, isn't even the tuning. It's that every specialization has an apparent niche and is considerably weaker in anything but their niche. This means for optimal play you have to constantly change your specialization. Now, I realize that is a subjective matter, if I don't like having to spec based on scenario I should have rolled something else. I made the right assumption that warlocks would be under-represented, which is why i chose to role it this expansion. I just made the wrong assumption that Lock would be like every other class and have a "raid spec". Most other classes seem to have an apparent "dominant" spec for "most" situations that people can count on for raiding. I think the closest to lock in this regard is rogue, as they clearly have a stronger aoe/cleave spec and a strong ST spec.

To those who say demo is good on most fights, hell, even the fights we know demo is probably better on... are you ignoring or being catered to in your raid setups? There are instances in raid, say on Ursoc, where I understand the mechanics of being within what, 25 yards, to absorb roars. However, the raid leader prefers everyone stand in melee of the boss because he really doesn't understand how warlocks are punished by movement apparently. I'm just curious if those parsing well, are actually following raid movements, or are being allowed to cheat to minimize their movement so that their dps can keep up with other classes that can do it on the move.

I was watching a stream and saw a lock in top 5 on first phase of elereth, a portion of the fight I would not expect to see them there. I then paid attention to where they were, he was standing in the middle of the room, on his own, basically ignoring mechanics. If they were to get targetted with the mechanic that everyone moves from one side of the room to the other on, it'd basically just be a wipe. I also had a raid leader at the beginning of this tier who understood locks and would cater my job to not having to move or do anything important in the raid. Just to dps near the top of the raid, but not any better than many other specs who can do it while doing mechanics.

Ultimately I guess it all comes down to our mobility. I don't think portal is going to change us that much, it's too long a cool down. What needs to happen is our dps rotation needs to include an element, on a relatively short cooldown, that is a positive to our rotation, that is instant such that we can time our rotation to cast our instants when we have to move. On Ursoc, I'm doing this with lifetap, but if you move too often, the lifetap isn't necessary and I mean, lifetap hurts our rotation doesn't really help it (unless you're oom).

And if 7.1 dosen't change we are really going to be hurting even more. Demonic skin allows you to ignore many minor damage effects without putting a strain on your healers, while burning rush allows you to acknowledge the important ones (like on elereth) with much less deeps loss (but still way more than other classes). It will be miserable not having both those abilities at my disposal.

[Gaidax]

And if 7.1 dosen't change we are really going to be hurting even more. Demonic skin allows you to ignore many minor damage effects without putting a strain on your healers, while burning rush allows you to acknowledge the important ones (like on elereth) with much less deeps loss (but still way more than other classes). It will be miserable not having both those abilities at my disposal.

Demon Skin in Raids is not that amazing really, you stack shield with Soul Leech like mad anyway simply due to DPS you do, so effectively you only lose 5% extra shield and a bit of regen.

On the other hand you will be able to take Circle, which is not amazing, but is something too to GTFO out of shit fast.

It's more annoying to lose Demon Skin in PvP or WQs and such, where you do not have shield running 24/7 due to constant heavy DPS.

Although I must say, I really think they should have just passively given it to us and be done with it, you know all the "strengths" thing and such.

[Deleted]

I think my problem with Locks, isn't even the tuning. It's that every specialization has an apparent niche and is considerably weaker in anything but their niche. This means for optimal play you have to constantly change your specialization. Now, I realize that is a subjective matter, if I don't like having to spec based on scenario I should have rolled something else. I made the right assumption that warlocks would be under-represented, which is why i chose to role it this expansion. I just made the wrong assumption that Lock would be like every other class and have a "raid spec". Most other classes seem to have an apparent "dominant" spec for "most" situations that people can count on for raiding. I think the closest to lock in this regard is rogue, as they clearly have a stronger aoe/cleave spec and a strong ST spec.

To those who say demo is good on most fights, hell, even the fights we know demo is probably better on... are you ignoring or being catered to in your raid setups? There are instances in raid, say on Ursoc, where I understand the mechanics of being within what, 25 yards, to absorb roars. However, the raid leader prefers everyone stand in melee of the boss because he really doesn't understand how warlocks are punished by movement apparently. I'm just curious if those parsing well, are actually following raid movements, or are being allowed to cheat to minimize their movement so that their dps can keep up with other classes that can do it on the move.

I was watching a stream and saw a lock in top 5 on first phase of elereth, a portion of the fight I would not expect to see them there. I then paid attention to where they were, he was standing in the middle of the room, on his own, basically ignoring mechanics. If they were to get targetted with the mechanic that everyone moves from one side of the room to the other on, it'd basically just be a wipe. I also had a raid leader at the beginning of this tier who understood locks and would cater my job to not having to move or do anything important in the raid. Just to dps near the top of the raid, but not any better than many other specs who can do it while doing mechanics.

Ultimately I guess it all comes down to our mobility. I don't think portal is going to change us that much, it's too long a cool down. What needs to happen is our dps rotation needs to include an element, on a relatively short cooldown, that is a positive to our rotation, that is instant such that we can time our rotation to cast our instants when we have to move. On Ursoc, I'm doing this with lifetap, but if you move too often, the lifetap isn't necessary and I mean, lifetap hurts our rotation doesn't really help it (unless you're oom).

If they don't cater to your needs, why do they bring you along in raids? I think you need to get the hell out of that team if they don't understand how your class works. Raid leaders aren't there to just put four markers down and shout about everyone's flasks and food.

[iddqd]

Destro is the fastest spec for leveling, and is fun. Summon voidwalker, target mob, sic void on target, nuke. repeat. get to the point that you can do this with several mobs at a time using aoe spells. things die in 2-3 chaos bolts max. Affliction is slower cause you have to wait for your dots to tick. demo...cant really comment, its my least played spec.

Dude, sick tip: for normal leveling and rare mobs you dont need a voidwalker, or any other pet. I run GoSac all the time and NEVER have any problems, not with dying (hi defensive cooldowns!) nor with being interrupted a lot while casting, things die too fast!

[Gratlim]

Because you should level up as the thing you will have to play end-game: Destro.
Currently our best spec by a very long shot.

[Coffeh]

Easiest to level? Probably affliction. Haunt pretty much 1-shots everything. Until 100 anyway.