Class remorse: Should i keep playing my warlock?

I'm only up to lvl 25 with my warlock, but i'm getting concerned. Reading the forums at the WoW site makes the upper level warlock sound like a red-headed stepchild in the end game. Poor pet balance, underpowered DoT, I'm starting to think that if i want to play the high level endgame or PvP, i'd be better starting over with a priest, shaman, mage or paladin. Anyone playing Warlocks at a high level have any advice?

Patrick

You''ll get that impression from all classes official forums.

My Warlock is 38 so I don''t know anything about the end-game yet. I''ll still give you my perspective on things.

What do you mean by poor pet balance? Without knowing what you mean I can''t really speak to your concern, but I think the Fellhunter needs some tweaking, the other pets are all excellent at their intended role (succubus as mini-rogue, imp as mini-mage, voidwalker as mini-tank).

Enslave Demon was a toy spell but it evidently got stealth buffed, such that combined with Curse of Shadows you can keep an Infernal or Doomguard under control for a decent length of time now. Unfortunately they aren''t usable in PvP yet, as the change in the last patch to disallow Enslave Demon on tapped targets makes it super easy for someone to turn your enslaved pet against you with no hope of re-enslaving it. I doubt Blizzard will allow this to remain for long, the change to Enslave Demon and priests'' Mind Control to not work on tapped targets seem like just the quickest thing they could do to get rid of some griefing. So I''m not worried about this too much.

I was greatly concerned about the 8 debuff/DoT per mob limit, this had the potential to really ruin Warlocks ability to get in on end-game raids (nobody would ever want more than one), but Blizzard has posted that they are fixing this.

I don''t have much PvP experience in WoW, but I don''t expect it to be too much different from other games -- surprise, crowd control, and front-loaded damage rule the day. Since DoTs are by definition not front-loaded, noone focusing on PvP should rely on them as their primary source of damage. Thus if you want an PvP-focused build you''d be wise to focus on talents that let you maximize damage from our direct damage and bolt spells (such as a build that has both Shadow Mastery and Ruin in it).

Fear was nerfed, true, but no harder for us than any other caster''s cc spell.

The last PvP problem for Warlocks is the inability to gather shards from PvP combat. This is truly a major issue and sadly one that I''m not confident Blizzard will address. We''ll see.

I love that we can kill slowly and mana efficiently and with little downtime, or dump mana and generate huge DPS. We have high risk, high reward spells like Enslave Demon and Inferno. We can manage our own hit points and mana, do some crowd control, have some excellent boss-killing abilities, self-rez, and are a complex class with lots of tools in the toolbox. Overall, I absolutely love my Warlock, whether you should change to another class really depends on what your preferences and goals are.

You''ll get that impression from all classes official forums.

Yeah, try to ignore those cesspits of whine if you can.

Basically, here''s how to decide whether to quit a character.
Are you having fun?
If not, is it the character or something else?
If it''s the character, find a new one. I recommed Paladin.

I agree with GG -- you''ll hear very dramatic complaints about every class...I swear once I saw two adjacent threads on the WoW forums, posted by two different players, one entitled something like ""Paladins way too powerful"" and the other something like ""Paladins way too weak"".

Blizzard admits in the class description that Warlocks are probably the quirkiest and trickiest class to play.

I have found my Priest to be one pleasant surprise after another. There were a ton of spells that I never thought I''d use, but I trained in them anyway. Holy Sh*t, did they change the game for me. I love unexpected pleasures like that...

"hubbinsd" wrote:

I have found my Priest to be one pleasant surprise after another. There were a ton of spells that I never thought I''d use, but I trained in them anyway. Holy Sh*t, did they change the game for me. I love unexpected pleasures like that...

Heh, I hear that. I actually used levitate today to save the life of my priest. Now granted, it was because I stupidly stepped of the edge of a mesa in 1000 Needles, but nonethless, it was a far enough fall that I would have splattered without levitate.

So there''s at least 8 silver in durability costs saved. Now if I can only find such a use about 12 more times, it will make up for that 1g+ cost . . . wait a minute . . .

"SlyFrog" wrote:

Heh, I hear that. I actually used levitate today to save the life of my priest. Now granted, it was because I stupidly stepped of the edge of a mesa in 1000 Needles, but nonethless, it was a far enough fall that I would have splattered without levitate.

Are you making fun of me? Last night I fell off the lift in 1000 Needles onto a ledge and died. Since I couldn''t get close enough to rez, I jumped my ghost off the edge, rezzed in mid air, and died again when I hit the ground

It was not my finest moment.

"hubbinsd" wrote:
"SlyFrog" wrote:

Heh, I hear that. I actually used levitate today to save the life of my priest. Now granted, it was because I stupidly stepped of the edge of a mesa in 1000 Needles, but nonethless, it was a far enough fall that I would have splattered without levitate.

Are you making fun of me? Last night I fell off the lift in 1000 Needles onto a ledge and died. Since I couldn''t get close enough to rez, I jumped my ghost off the edge, rezzed in mid air, and died again when I hit the ground

It was not my finest moment.

Are you serious? That is awesome. I wasn''t making fun of you with my story (it really happened, and I didn''t even know about what happened to you when I wrote it), but well, THAT IS AWESOME.

The midair falling to your death when you hit the ground thing is hilarious. I supposed it didn''t feel awesome to you at the time, but I''m envisioning some type of ""MTV Jackass"" videos of stupid WoW stunts, and that would definitely be in there.

I just started a warlock and got to 6 in record time, even compared to my paladin, which is saying something. Looking at the spell lines and the talents and reading of the exploits of some warlocks that are soloing 3 and 4 elite mobs up to 2 levels higher without rest or at the same time - granted, a party trick or possibly just hardcore seeing how far they can push, but still - makes the class sound fun for some time to come.

But I stand by my original suggestion... if you are having fun now, don''t worry what the whiners on the official forums are saying. If you are not having fun, and it''s the class that''s not fun for you, switch now.

"duckilama" wrote:

some warlocks that are soloing 3 and 4 elite mobs up to 2 levels higher without rest or at the same time

I find that extremely hard to believe, unless they are exploiting some bug such as broken mob pathing.

"Strekos" wrote:
"duckilama" wrote:

some warlocks that are soloing 3 and 4 elite mobs up to 2 levels higher without rest or at the same time

I find that extremely hard to believe, unless they are exploiting some bug such as broken mob pathing.

Even then I find it hard to believe..

during the third of our failed attempts and killing a level 56 elite mob last night (there were four of us level 52, 53, 54, and 55) I was at one point knocked back up into the cave and had got stuck.. we had the mob at 35% health.. The mob attempted to reach me but couldnt due to the area I had gotten knocked back up into.. I also couldnt get out..

The mob instantly fully healed himself and began to evade all attacks and spells.

Blizzard has put in some safeguards to prevent exploits from mobs not reaching you...

There is no way a Warlock could wedge himself safely somewhere and have his pet take out elite mobs while the warlock drinks or regains mana fast enough to keep his pet alive.

I''m not saying I have first hand evidence, just a few posts(about as trustworthy as the whiners, granted) giving some strategies that seem valid.
Mez+Fear+DoT+Curse and repeat the fear as needed, IIRC, along with some other stuff I''m not high enough level to grasp.
About as ""cheap"" as Necro fearkiting in EQ1, and granted, seems like a parlor trick, or possibly a farming technique, but it seems ""believable"" and possible.

Once I have a succubus and fear, I''ll see if I can find some elites of equal or slightly higher level - maybe Ogres in Loch Modan - and play with it, since my Warlock is a pure alt and purely experimental.

"duckilama" wrote:

I''m not saying I have first hand evidence, just a few posts(about as trustworthy as the whiners, granted) giving some strategies that seem valid.
Mez+Fear+DoT+Curse and repeat the fear as needed, IIRC, along with some other stuff I''m not high enough level to grasp.
About as ""cheap"" as Necro fearkiting in EQ1, and granted, seems like a parlor trick, or possibly a farming technique, but it seems ""believable"" and possible.

Once I have a succubus and fear, I''ll see if I can find some elites of equal or slightly higher level - maybe Ogres in Loch Modan - and play with it, since my Warlock is a pure alt and purely experimental.

elite mobs simply have too many hps for any of these strategies to work... the Warlock will run out of mana or expand so many resources that this isnt nearly as efficient as simply soloing regular mobs...

The exp elites give isnt that much higher than regular mobs.. I cant imagine and intelligent enough player devising these strategies from realizing that.

"duckilama" wrote:

I''m not saying I have first hand evidence, just a few posts(about as trustworthy as the whiners, granted) giving some strategies that seem valid.
Mez+Fear+DoT+Curse and repeat the fear as needed, IIRC, along with some other stuff I''m not high enough level to grasp.

Seduce (which works on Humanoids only) and fear both work against 1 mob at a time only. So theoretically you could juggle 2 elites at once, seducing one and fearing the other. Seducing breaks on damage and the succubus can''t do anything else at the same time. So, no way 3, and certainly not with no rest.

Since damage breaks seduce, if you want to keep re-seducing you can''t use DoTs, unless you''re going to keep them feared through the entire length of the DoT (30 seconds on Curse of Agony). Good luck doing that with diminishing returns on fear and chance of fear breaking on damage. And any strategy that doesn''t rely on DoTs will have you running out of mana before the elite is dead.

Well one non-DoT strategy valid at 48+ would look like this:
seduce, curse of elements, soul fire, seduce, curse of shadow, shadowbolt, shadowburn, seduce, shadowbolt, shadowburn etc. Shadowburn has 15 sec. cooldown so hopefully those seduces don''t break too quickly or your succubus is going to run out of mana re-seducing before you can kill it... Might have enough mana for one that way, not even close enough to juggle fear-DoT-kiting one while simultaneously doing this.

You definitely can employ a couple different fear + DoT strategies to take on a single same level elite, depending on which pet you''re using. Resists will kill you though so going after higher level elites increases the risk quite a bit. A single 2+ level elite is possible though if you are careful and lucky. But warlocks aren''t the only class who can kill a single 2+ level elite if they are lucky.

The thing is, why? Soloing an elite thats even conned with my druid, I would get a hair more than double the xp of a single non elite (about 300 vs. 130 xp). This was an elite mob 2 levels below but still yellow. It took several minutes and completely drained all my mana. Throw in the fact that these were runner monsters and you just have to question yourself why? It seems to me like elites are balanced so that soloing one is fruitless. Ok, so higher level ones give you 4x xp but take 5 times longer to kill.

Not only do the battles drain all my mana but a resist here or there will tip the scales towards my death.

Curse of Agony is unbelievably mana efficient. However, as was said before, it lasts 30 seconds. I can see it taking 5-10 minutes to kill a lower level elite with this DoT.

"fangblackbone" wrote:

The thing is, why?

Only (good, IMO) reason to solo elites is for a quest for which you don''t want or can''t find a group.

Last night I finished the quest in Booty Bay for the leathercrafter where the last step is to kill an elite saltwater crocolisk. Yellow quest, the croc was 38 and so was I at the time (39.5 now yay). Took me maybe 2 minutes to kill the croc but easier than finding another person to group with as the only other guy in the area was a 36 paladin (who I also saw solo one of these crocs by the way... took him at least 4 minutes though).

The thing is, why?

I dunno...
Parlor trick?
Being ""uber""?
Better loot?

"duckilama" wrote:
The thing is, why?

I dunno...
Parlor trick?
Being ""uber""?
Better loot?

Elites usually dont have better loot than non elites...perhaps a few more silver.

But soloing elite ogres in Arathi never netted me any special loot over regular mobs.

"duckilama" wrote:
The thing is, why?

I dunno...
Parlor trick?
Being ""uber""?
Better loot?

But it''s not a very good parlor trick or uber in the least when Warlocks are far from the only people that can do it. By ""it"" I mean solo a same level elite, or even one a couple levels higher. As to your original post about soloing 3-4 at the same time, that would be a very good trick indeed but I''ll eat my hat if it can be done without exploiting a bug