Mage or Warlock?

U

Uncle Slappy

Veteran XV
I'm sick of healing and wanna roll a ranged DPS class. I like to battlegrounds and may eventually give arena a try. I also will likely raid eventually since I'm in a pretty big guild.

So what are the pros and cons of both? I'm told warlock is easier to level, but mage is higher dps and better at PvP in end-game.

I heard destro locks are pretty close to mages in raids, but don't know if this is true. If it is I was thinking just level affliction and change to destro at 80. But if arcane spec is worth it, I don't mind leveling up as a mage, although all that drinking sounds like it blows.
 
I leveled a mage back in BC (mostly using AOE grinding, honestly) and it wasn't too bad. I quite enjoy it now, at level 80.

I'm currently leveling a Warlock (its lvl31) and its a bit of a pain in the ass. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, I'm leveling Afflic at the moment... but it just doesn't feel as fun as the mage did :shrug:
 
I didn't find the warlock that great to play, I got it to about 71 or 72, I did afflic all the way, but I hit 70 before wrath came out. I used a few macros with a cast sequence for the dots, I only raided in Kara with it a couple of times and didn't find it very fun, and I wasn't good at it.

With my mage I did some raiding in Wrath with I did like, arcane was a lot of fun adjusting the number of arcane blasts used based on your mana and length of the fight. Overall I had more fun doing 5 mans early in TBC, I hit 70 within a few weeks of launch and had a group of people that would run Shadowlabs several times a day, I sheep and CS pulled every trash pull in that place, that was a lot more fun then hitting a button every cooldown.
 
Also, PvP is fun as fuck on a mage, and I would venture to say the skill cap is higher, too. I've never played a warlock in PvP, but I just love the finesse required to play a mage well.
 
I started playing this game with a lock and it was my main until wraith. Ive always really enjoyed the play style of the lock, but now with their primary def spell, fear, getting so much hate I would roll with a mage. PVE wise I think they could out dps a mage, but given equal gear and skill a mage will win.
 
Leveling in this game has been nerfed so hard you should be slapped for daring to use it as a criteria for class selection.

9er said:
Also, PvP is fun as fuck on a mage, and I would venture to say the skill cap is higher, too. I've never played a warlock in PvP, but I just love the finesse required to play a mage well.
Click to expand...

^This

Mage PVP is by far the most challenging of the 4 classes I have made it to endgame with(Mage/Warrior/Rog/Priest). Good PVP mages are hard as shit to find, because a mage's ability to be effective in PVP is so much about a combination of controlling your opponents and DPS.

I haven't played in a couple months but last I did the two were about equal in terms of DPS, with an advantage going to locks on fights that required a lot of movement. But that is subject to change with the ebb and flow of buffbats and nerfhammers.
 
2bad4u said:
Leveling in this game has been nerfed so hard you should be slapped for daring to use it as a criteria for class selection.
Click to expand...

Except that he wants to roll a brand new toon. Which means he's going to have to level it. And if you can't enjoy leveling a toon, its probably not worth the bother in the first place.

My vote is for the mage
 
Terra said:
Warlock leveling gets fucking easy once you have a felguard.
Click to expand...

It's pretty easy with Dark Pact at 40 with drain tanking too.

Don't pick your class based on what does more damage or is better in pvp endgame right now because it'll probably change by the time you get to endgame. Pick your class based on what playstyle you like better, even if you end up doing less damage in raids you'll be happier since that's what you'll be doing for a few hours straight.

I'll describe Warlock raid playstyles for you since I'm bored:

Affliction: You have to keep your dots/debuffs up and spam shadow bolt as filler then switching to drain soul as a filler sub 25%. Has a long ramp-up time so is poor on fights with adds with short life spans but can get a moderate dps increase in fights with multiple targets with high life by multi-dotting (though not as much as you might think). Is widely considered a very mobile spec although I'd disagree with that seeing as how if your dots/debuffs all fall off then you've got another 10 second ramp-up to start doing full dps again. Has the largest DPS loss by putting up Curse of Elements.

Demonology: Revolves around stacking various cooldowns at the correct times along with large DPS increase sub 35% with Shadowbolt/Soulfire weaving (the weaving is gone next patch thankfully). Basic rotation is very simple, difficulty is with properly utilizing cooldowns. Uses Felguard as pet but this is not particularly significant since like the other pets it's mostly just fire and forget. Next patch the sub 35% difficulty will drop greatly but the normal rotation will be more difficult with the reworking of Molten Core into an Eclipse type proc where you'll need to switch from shadowbolt to incinerate while it's up. Provides an excellent spellpower buff to your raid. Currently the most difficult spec.

Destruction: The easiest spec. Challenge of the spec is managing clashing cooldowns of different items while ensuring immolate stays up. Has very little DPS loss from putting up Curse of Elements. Provides Replenishment. Has very high burst making it good on encounters that require fast target switching or short lived adds.
 
I would simply vote to wait until Cataclysm is out. If you are going to be doing a fresh re-roll you may as well wait until then so you can experience the new 1 - 60 content after Deathwing fucks everything up.
 
GraphiX said:
Warlocks will be topping DPS charts once they implement the new decimate build.

Click to expand...

That's old. They significantly toned down Decimation on the PTR since. It was stupid in that incarnation because it was like 17k theoretical DPS sub 35% in ICC gear but like 8k otherwise (made up numbers but you should get the idea).


Demo is currently below all the other specs except shitty hybrid specs (0/31/40 and 0/40/31 for example) in the theorycrafting for 3.3. It's still closer than it's ever been before though.

http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t48311-simulationcraft_warlocks_3_3_numbers/
chart
 
Last edited:
Adroit said:
Warlocks have a major scaling problem right now. Mage's seem to be scaling great.
Click to expand...

This is also true. I went from regularly topping the meters in Ulduar to getting 5th or 6th at best in TOC. Warlock scaling doesn't look like it'll be any different in ICC but who knows :shrug:.

Again, I'd say play whatever you find fun though or you'll hate it and quit.

Edit: I'll also say that in 6 months or whenever Catacylsm comes out balance will be all fucked up again and the Warlock class is probably going to play very differently due to the reworking of Soul Shards (most likely only Hunters will play more differently).
 
Last edited:
i really need to just up and sell my mage for like $100

if i ever come back to this game i need to level myself up again, i have 130 days played on my mage who is in 5/5 t8.5 when i quit a few months back
 
m00g00 said:
if you like getting your ass pushed in by pretty much everyone, play a mage.
Click to expand...

this. as i've leveled my mage (currently 71), i've been doing a bunch of battlegrounds every bracket. since 29, one thing has remained entirely consistent: if you don't get the jump on ANYONE, you're dead before you can turn around to fight, or get a cast off


i'm assuming resilience changes all of this, because i've seen some frost mages absolutely dominate in arenas and 1v1
 
Back
Top