Leveling as a Lock

[Optymus]

Hey warlock community how's it going So, totally noob question i guess but trade chat isn't being very friendly about it so here it is: What is a good spec to level as a warlock with the current content. What spec did you level as throughout any period of history in WoW. What spec did you enjoy the most leveling? Just overall how do you like your spec as a warlock?

Cheers, Optymus

[Vastis]

Demo is the way to go for leveling since now at level 10 you get your Felguard. The felguard cant be beat. If stuff gets hairy just felstorm and run like hell. I personally leveled my lock a long while ago so how I leveled is way different. Affliction wasn't bad back then and isnt half bad now. Its pretty low down time with life draining.

[Deleted]

Imo, level as affliction always.
Just run around dotting everything... the mobs usually cant hit more than you get healed with all the corruption so you can tank quite a few mobs, though i'm not quite sure how easily since the fel armor nerf, but you never got fel armor under 60ish anyway.

[Veriu]

....am so confused....why do people keep saying that fel armor was nerfed?

It was a % of your max health (meaning dotting up 15 mobs didn't help you live)...now it's 3/6% of damage you deal....which means if you dot up 15 mobs, you are healed for MORE than if you dot up only 1 mob....also this means that doing more damage (gaining int/spellpower/haste/crit/mastery) actually has causes you to heal yourself for more...as opposed to the old fel armor/siphon life/drain life where the only way to increase your self healing was to gain more stamina (...having stamina be like the #1 or #2 stat for soloing = lame btw) Now your self healing actually scales with your damage, I know it's a shock...
...gaining intelligence/spellpower/haste/crit/mastery affecting your spells is a huge nerf I know...

Leveling a lock, either demo or affliction. Demo is safer soloing and better in low lvl dungeons, affliction is faster soloing but you will probably die a lot and is pretty bad in low lvl dungeons.

If your wondering, demo is safer cause generally mobs are beating on your demon and not you, meaning if it starts to go badly, you can just run run run and let your demon die. Whereas for affliction, you are drain tanking...so if stuff starts going badly, you might be able to pop howl of terror and perhaps run away....but probably not.

[Agallochh]

....am so confused....why do people keep saying that fel armor was nerfed?

It was a % of your max health (meaning dotting up 15 mobs didn't help you live)...now it's 3/6% of damage you deal....which means if you dot up 15 mobs, you are healed for MORE than if you dot up only 1 mob....also this means that doing more damage (gaining int/spellpower/haste/crit/mastery) actually has causes you to heal yourself for more...as opposed to the old fel armor/siphon life/drain life where the only way to increase your self healing was to gain more stamina (...having stamina be like the #1 or #2 stat for soloing = lame btw) Now your self healing actually scales with your damage, I know it's a shock...
...gaining intelligence/spellpower/haste/crit/mastery affecting your spells is a huge nerf I know...

Leveling a lock, either demo or affliction. Demo is safer soloing and better in low lvl dungeons, affliction is faster soloing but you will probably die a lot and is pretty bad in low lvl dungeons.

If your wondering, demo is safer cause generally mobs are beating on your demon and not you, meaning if it starts to go badly, you can just run run run and let your demon die. Whereas for affliction, you are drain tanking...so if stuff starts going badly, you might be able to pop howl of terror and perhaps run away....but probably not.

It's a nerf because if you look at the HPS the old model healed for and the HPS that the current model heals for you'll realize how much of a nerf it was.

[Veriu]

It's a nerf because if you look at the HPS the old model healed for and the HPS that the current model heals for you'll realize how much of a nerf it was.

That totally depends on how much damage you are dealing....yeah, if you are just standing there fighting one mob then it was a nerf....but the more damage you deal, the more healing you get now.

I believe the old fel armor was 2/4% health every 5 seconds. I'll use easy numbers to make this easier for me, so assume 100k hp. that means 2k or 4k health every 5 seconds. that comes to 400 or 800 HPS. with the new fel armor, you get 3/6% damage as healing. which means 400/.03 or 800/.06 = 13.3k DPS.

13.3k dps and new fel armor heals for the same as old fel armor. anything more, and new will heal for more....currently I don't raid on my lock anymore (he's my old main, and has only been 85 for a week or so), but even in just heroic dungeon gear I pull more than 13k easily...doing TB dailies and dotting up every mob I need to kill for each quest at the same time I've seen my dps hit over 15k....

For pvp, idk....I don't pvp on my lock, but for pve that dps point where new fel armor>old fel armor is pretty easy to achiev.

If you don't like my numbers, here's a web page I just did a google for, showing graphs for 100k, 120k, 140k, and 160k max health and dps.

http://felfire.com/warlock/fel-armor-remake/

[Agallochh]

That totally depends on how much damage you are dealing....yeah, if you are just standing there fighting one mob then it was a nerf....but the more damage you deal, the more healing you get now.

I believe the old fel armor was 2/4% health every 5 seconds. I'll use easy numbers to make this easier for me, so assume 100k hp. that means 2k or 4k health every 5 seconds. that comes to 400 or 800 HPS. with the new fel armor, you get 3/6% damage as healing. which means 400/.03 or 800/.06 = 13.3k DPS.

13.3k dps and new fel armor heals for the same as old fel armor. anything more, and new will heal for more....currently I don't raid on my lock anymore (he's my old main, and has only been 85 for a week or so), but even in just heroic dungeon gear I pull more than 13k easily...doing TB dailies and dotting up every mob I need to kill for each quest at the same time I've seen my dps hit over 15k....

For pvp, idk....I don't pvp on my lock, but for pve that dps point where new fel armor>old fel armor is pretty easy to achiev.

If you don't like my numbers, here's a web page I just did a google for, showing graphs for 100k, 120k, 140k, and 160k max health and dps.

http://felfire.com/warlock/fel-armor-remake/

Yeah, when do you sustain 13.3k DPS in PVP.... on any character? Just wondering.

[Deleted]

Yeah, when do you sustain 13.3k DPS in PVP.... on any character? Just wondering.

Don't forget to take into consideration the mortal strike effect nerf. Plus the op was asking about levelling spec, so the only pvp that'll he probably face is getting ganged by higher levels or bgs where you pretty much can just dot everything in sight. On topic, currently levelling a second warlock as affliction and it's pretty fast. Dungeon dps is horrible though.