Warlocks BWL & Beyond

[Cempa]

I recall Warlock numbers thinning out BWL and beyond -any one recall that?

MC has always been fairy easy and you'd see +5 locks in many raids. As BWL opens its doors, and fights get longer and wipes more frequent, raids would want to carry all HS ranks. Warlocks were expected to have x3 specs (so often told what spec they should play) and should have a large amount of shards ready before raid starts. Add to that BG's and the need for so many shards/spec change and that could explain why so many re roll.

+BWL just about every raiding guild had a spot open for a Warlock?!

Thoughts?

[Firedemon]

Since Destruction scales extremely well with gear and not being allowed to use dots also becomes less of penalty, there will be no reason for guilds not to be interested in running with locks.

For bg's, both DS/Ruin and SM/Ruin work very good, so there's no need to respec.

As for shard management .. well just keep your bags filled .. never heard of stocking the entire raid with healthstones, let alone 3x of them lol. It's usually tanks and whoever absolutely needs one.

[Puri]

I have not the slightest memory of warlock numbers thinning out in BWL or later. I remember their numbers growing, especially considering how good casters start to scale with gear.

[almarsguides]

Think i remember like 3 per raid in bwl

[fjeenzy]

Warlocks become better with every tier, as more +hit gear becomes available, plus the fact destro scales well with gear.

However, the top end guilds will stick to melee heavy raid setups.

[Thage]

Warlocks become better with every tier, as more +hit gear becomes available, plus the fact destro scales well with gear.

However, the top end guilds will stick to melee heavy raid setups.

Also, if memory serves, once Zul'Gurub becomes available and Warlocks can craft some cloth gear from it, they become absolute terrors, pun intended.

[Outofmana]

Especially horde will be melee heavy to the max, even the 'mediocre' guilds will do this on horde. On alliance though a casterroster, especially in the tier below "world top10" will be generally stronger. And with Warlocks getting better and better as time goes on, it'll be alright to have 3 or even 4 in raid.

BWL era guilds are recruiting locks since a lot of locks burnout in MC phase, being by far the worst class to play during this era, don't have gear to support anything. On one private server I was amazed how burned out and careless my Warlock classleader was for weeks, but I started to play in BWL era and he from the start. Now I realise yes this whole MC phase would burn any warlock out from pure boredom of feeling useless.

Thing is, having been a warlock and having went through a warlock roster for ages on multiple private servers and now classic;. 50% of raiding locks seemingly quit during MC/BWL phase already because the class is so boring then with all the resists and partials, and as time goes on a warlock roster seems hard to maintain, We always had a roster of 3 with the 4th one always leaving, hard to build a strong roster for that class somehow as warlocks tend to quit. While after ZG comes out, the class imo becomes extremely good for a caster, competing easily with mages, hellfiring ZG trash etc, it really comes to life and the experience is way better from that point onwards.

Again way worse on horde side; casters in general get fed up of playing 2nd fiddle and no one caring about anything else than your melee team, and I don't blame them. As a caster I'd always go alliance, they seem to be more balanced and don't care that much, not having windfury. Sure it's still faster with a full melee roster of 6 groups, but I find it's way more lenient.

The shardthing has been done to death; for PvE you never farm shards, you drain mobs from shazzrah onwards so you have full shardbags for the next raid/onyxia already. Don't have to farm outside of raids whatsoever. The only time I ever did was when we didn't have time for C'Thun and the next evening it would be...C'thun, having no trash in advance. But that was once in years of raiding.

Heck even I cancelled by subscription, I'll wait for ZG and bloodvine.

[Colmadero]

Especially horde will be melee heavy to the max, even the 'mediocre' guilds will do this on horde. On alliance though a casterroster, especially in the tier below "world top10" will be generally stronger. And with Warlocks getting better and better as time goes on, it'll be alright to have 3 or even 4 in raid.

BWL era guilds are recruiting locks since a lot of locks burnout in MC phase, being by far the worst class to play during this era, don't have gear to support anything. On one private server I was amazed how burned out and careless my Warlock classleader was for weeks, but I started to play in BWL era and he from the start. Now I realise yes this whole MC phase would burn any warlock out from pure boredom of feeling useless.

Thing is, having been a warlock and having went through a warlock roster for ages on multiple private servers and now classic;. 50% of raiding locks seemingly quit during MC/BWL phase already because the class is so boring then with all the resists and partials, and as time goes on a warlock roster seems hard to maintain, We always had a roster of 3 with the 4th one always leaving, hard to build a strong roster for that class somehow as warlocks tend to quit. While after ZG comes out, the class imo becomes extremely good for a caster, competing easily with mages, hellfiring ZG trash etc, it really comes to life and the experience is way better from that point onwards.

Again way worse on horde side; casters in general get fed up of playing 2nd fiddle and no one caring about anything else than your melee team, and I don't blame them. As a caster I'd always go alliance, they seem to be more balanced and don't care that much, not having windfury. Sure it's still faster with a full melee roster of 6 groups, but I find it's way more lenient.

The shardthing has been done to death; for PvE you never farm shards, you drain mobs from shazzrah onwards so you have full shardbags for the next raid/onyxia already. Don't have to farm outside of raids whatsoever. The only time I ever did was when we didn't have time for C'Thun and the next evening it would be...C'thun, having no trash in advance. But that was once in years of raiding.

Heck even I cancelled by subscription, I'll wait for ZG and bloodvine.

While I didn't play Vanilla while it was current, I'm currently playing a Warlock and can confirm that all the resists are putting me off considerably. Spell hit% gear is incredibly scarce.

During trash/5 man content, I destroy the meters. During boss fights? I'm lucky to be in the rankings, at all.

Majordomo is a blast to do, though. All of the ads are lvl 62 so nothing misses =P

[BicycleMafioso]

I remember our raid had thinning ranks of Warlocks during BWL.
Mostly because they pulled aggro and died due to negative resistances...

I don't remember there being fewer Warlocks in AQ40 than in MC. I remember there being more of them, because they were quite scarce before then. No one played Warlocks in the early day, at least on my faction and realm.

[fjeenzy]

Especially horde will be melee heavy to the max, even the 'mediocre' guilds will do this on horde. On alliance though a casterroster, especially in the tier below "world top10" will be generally stronger. And with Warlocks getting better and better as time goes on, it'll be alright to have 3 or even 4 in raid.

BWL era guilds are recruiting locks since a lot of locks burnout in MC phase, being by far the worst class to play during this era, don't have gear to support anything. On one private server I was amazed how burned out and careless my Warlock classleader was for weeks, but I started to play in BWL era and he from the start. Now I realise yes this whole MC phase would burn any warlock out from pure boredom of feeling useless.

Thing is, having been a warlock and having went through a warlock roster for ages on multiple private servers and now classic;. 50% of raiding locks seemingly quit during MC/BWL phase already because the class is so boring then with all the resists and partials, and as time goes on a warlock roster seems hard to maintain, We always had a roster of 3 with the 4th one always leaving, hard to build a strong roster for that class somehow as warlocks tend to quit. While after ZG comes out, the class imo becomes extremely good for a caster, competing easily with mages, hellfiring ZG trash etc, it really comes to life and the experience is way better from that point onwards.

Again way worse on horde side; casters in general get fed up of playing 2nd fiddle and no one caring about anything else than your melee team, and I don't blame them. As a caster I'd always go alliance, they seem to be more balanced and don't care that much, not having windfury. Sure it's still faster with a full melee roster of 6 groups, but I find it's way more lenient.

The shardthing has been done to death; for PvE you never farm shards, you drain mobs from shazzrah onwards so you have full shardbags for the next raid/onyxia already. Don't have to farm outside of raids whatsoever. The only time I ever did was when we didn't have time for C'Thun and the next evening it would be...C'thun, having no trash in advance. But that was once in years of raiding.

Heck even I cancelled by subscription, I'll wait for ZG and bloodvine.

Why hello OOM, long time no see! I see we even play on the same retail server, even though I've not logged onto retail since classic release. Hope you're doing well!

On topic; warlocks are 'bad' until hit gears become obtainable. It's pretty much the TLDR. :-)

[Outofmana]

Why hello OOM, long time no see! I see we even play on the same retail server, even though I've not logged onto retail since classic release. Hope you're doing well!

On topic; warlocks are 'bad' until hit gears become obtainable. It's pretty much the TLDR. :-)

<333

Best part of classic is all meeting all these retail vanilla players again from back in the day, hated facing SECURITY and you as a warrior in warsong gulch Funny after 15+ years we end up on the same realm ánd the opposite faction again Looking forward to get killed by you again when I return to play in a while gg, in the meantime wipe some Senseless worldbuffs please, that's always funny ;x Is it also Windforce from SEC btw? Some old guildies like Karakan/Delthar and the main competition Weasel from pvt servers playing there too I see, funny how everyone ends up at the same place somehow.

OT: Yeah with ZG we get such a boost it really feels like waking up from zombie mode as a warlock. Nowadays I'd use tier1 for the stamina to make it easier on the healers lol, dying hurts the speed a lot more than doing 2% more dps....of a bottom DPS.

[Chaelexi]

Since Destruction scales extremely well with gear and not being allowed to use dots also becomes less of penalty, there will be no reason for guilds not to be interested in running with locks.

For bg's, both DS/Ruin and SM/Ruin work very good, so there's no need to respec.

As for shard management .. well just keep your bags filled .. never heard of stocking the entire raid with healthstones, let alone 3x of them lol. It's usually tanks and whoever absolutely needs one.

there are 2 schools of thought. After bwl many top end guilds dropped down to 2 locks running COE and COR with replacing the shadow priest(disc weaving) and the other extra locks with rogues warriors or mages. as these classes are all higher DPS. the other was keep 5+locks and run a SP for weaving. if you have 3 or 4 locks you are hurting your damage as not enough players are able to justify the Shadow Priest.

[drakath]

Mid bwl is the toughest tier for locks. You start doing good damage with hit gear, but you're constantly threat capped. Once you get 8/8 nemesis though, locks really start to shine. It's basically a 20% damage increase, because even with the threat reduction you'll still be threat capped. But that takes at least a few nef kills and some luck.

[ONCHEhap]

Mid bwl is the toughest tier for locks. You start doing good damage with hit gear, but you're constantly threat capped. Once you get 8/8 nemesis though, locks really start to shine. It's basically a 20% damage increase, because even with the threat reduction you'll still be threat capped. But that takes at least a few nef kills and some luck.

tbh threat is a big part why I went for master demonologist.
Sure,it's less theorical damage,but not being threat capped ends up being an improvement.

Besides,it opens up a couple more of utility self buffs for when you'll need it,+60 resistance to everything on demand for example is nothing to shrug at.

[fjeenzy]

<333

Best part of classic is all meeting all these retail vanilla players again from back in the day, hated facing SECURITY and you as a warrior in warsong gulch Funny after 15+ years we end up on the same realm ánd the opposite faction again Looking forward to get killed by you again when I return to play in a while gg, in the meantime wipe some Senseless worldbuffs please, that's always funny ;x Is it also Windforce from SEC btw? Some old guildies like Karakan/Delthar and the main competition Weasel from pvt servers playing there too I see, funny how everyone ends up at the same place somehow.

OT: Yeah with ZG we get such a boost it really feels like waking up from zombie mode as a warlock. Nowadays I'd use tier1 for the stamina to make it easier on the healers lol, dying hurts the speed a lot more than doing 2% more dps....of a bottom DPS.

Yeah, it's wind, also a couple of other old Frostmaners :-)