Mage or Warlock?

Einstein

So i'm up to level 7 on human warlock, but can't get much further cos he's a crap fighter...so i made a human mage...

which one do u guys think is better pursuing?

Mr. CooL ICE

Depends on which one you find more fun tbh! I'm not sure how much rpg experience you have, so I'll put in simple terms. They are both dps caster classes, but the play styles are very different due to spell differences and warlocks having a pet.

The mage for a start, excels at burst damage, whereas the warlock relies on a lot of damage over time. For example, in a single fight, a mage will cast x amount of spells - most will cause a certain amount of damage per hit, and others will be used to get away from the mob. Also, mages have the best AoE spells (area of effect) spells.

A warlock's spells rely on slowly draining the mob of his health, while the pet is usually used to keep the mob away from the warlock. In a typical fight, certain DoTs (damage over time) should be cast at the start of the battle (in case a DoT that lasts 20 seconds is cast when the mob is nearly dead), while other spells (e.g. shadowbolt) or wands (cost no mana) can be used to whittle down the rest of his health.



You were saying he is a crap fighter - I only got my warlock up to lvl16, so I can't really comment on the class overall, but wait until you get the voidwalker quest at lvl10. IIRC, I also thought the warlock was crap before lvl10, but the voidwalker pet is much better for grinding mobs with than the imp; although he causes less damage, he is tougher, has more health, and his job is to keep bad guys away from you. It should sort out your complaint about him being a crap fighter.

Of the two classes, I recommend sticking with the warlock for another 5-10 levels. Ditch him and start a mage if he is annoying you. In PVP battlegrounds, the warlock is possibly the most imba class there is.

Einstein

cooool

yea, i was gettin kinda lonely as a mage without my lil pet

Ivan

Warlocks are infinitely easier to play than mages. Whether that is a good thing or not, is up to you but for your first character I would say stick with the warlock.

The warlock playstyle completely changes at level 10 with the voidwalker pet and again at level 16 with the addition of fear.

Mages dont get really good until 10 when they get frost nova.

Mages can produce water and food to eat and drink but a warlock rarely needs to eat or drink if s/he plays in a certain way.

DapperGent

I think the warlock is currently more powerful in both PvP and PvE at end game and as a pet class are much easier to level, for my money a mage is way way more fun though, really cool class.

Also as far as 5 man groups go a mage is the most desireable of the DPS classes to bring which would cut down at least a little on your wait times to get a 5 man group when you start dungeons.

Einstein

ok so i'm now a level 8 warlock with alchemy and enchanting professions (trainees)

Although they're kinda confusing :P

Fremen

Yeah, I'd pick mage if I were you, they looked like fun. I played a hunter to 60 before burning crusade, I think pet classes are a bit dull.

Enchanting can be a really nice way to make money easily. I used to arbitrage the AH with my priest, bidding on cheap green armor and disenchanting it into mats which cost more. Didn't have to grind for cash, which is nice because holy priests are incapable of it anyway.

(Edit: mages are like Irishmen- drink, fight, drink, fight, drink...)

coffee_cake

Mage = tbh
Mage is more dps, but lock will be more damage over time

Dcully

While ive never maxed out the level cap on either class i have both in their late 40s and must say i prefer the mage to play.
I got bored of dot dot dot on the lock.
Mages are always more sought after for 5 mans too i find.
I always find mages harder to kill in pvp than locks too because of their ability to trap and control the fight.

Overall id suggest a mage,great dps,greatcc,greatpvp,great fun especially frost mages
If i had time id love to level up my mage fully whereas ive no interest in my lock but thats just my two cents

joe_chicken

Einstein wrote: »

ok so i'm now a level 8 warlock with alchemy and enchanting professions (trainees)

If this is your first character I'd suggest ditching both of these.

Explanation:
There are 2 types of skill, secondary and primary.

You can have as many secondary as you want (first aid, cooking, fishing...)
But only 2 primary skills (alchemy, mining, enchanting...)

Then there are 2 types of primary skill, collecting and crafting.

Ideally, you'd want one collecting and one crafting (e.g. leatherworking and skinning) but, to be honest, if it's your first character, you'd be better off getting 2 collecting professions and selling everything in the Auction House.

The crafting professions takes a lot of collecting (time) and/or gold to get to high levels to make good stuff and when you're low level, you can't afford to waste gold.

When you reach into the 60's or 70 you can afford this stuff a lot easier, so you could ditch your collecting skills and pick up 2 crafting.

You have 2 crafting professions there (enchanting takes a lot of gold to level) so unless you have a lot of gold, you're gonna find it hard to level either.

If you really wanna keep one, I'd drop enchanting and take up herbalism, so you can collect stuff for alchemy. But personally I'd pick up mining (lots of gold in this, but can get a little tedious) and skinning (a medium amount of gold, but easy to do, as you're killing animals all the time)

Hope that helps

Mr. CooL ICE

I second joe_chicken. Unless you're a high level with lots of gold, you won't be able to level alchemy without herbalism first. I only got enchanting up to 75 on my warlock, so I can't comment much on it, but I found it a pain to get it up that far!

It depends on the server economy, but overall, I found mining to be the most profitable profession, and I highly recommend it. In the early stages, copper bars (not the ore) in stacks of 20 sell at a decent price. Tin and bronze bars sell at an ok price too, but before you start making stacks of bronze, check the auction house to see which would reap a better price - if a stack of tin and a stack of copper add up to more than twice the price of a stack of bronze, then don't make bronze (unless you want to get your mining skill up for that level)

As for a second profession - I recommend another gathering one. Skinning is relatively easy to level up, as long as you remember to skin all skinnable mobs you kill. Herbalism is useful too, but (might need to be corrected here) it might clash with mining, as both show up on the minimap, but only one can be tracked at a time.

I recommend keeping whatever two professions you have until about lvl 65-68, and ditch the one you least desire and take up tailoring. However, if you're thirsty for potions and have herbalism skilled up, go for that with alchemy.

Just another small thing which might not be clear - The colour coding up mobs and professions. When you are levelling up a skill, red > orange > yellow > green > grey. Red means you can't use that skill, orange means you can use it, and will always gain 1 profession xp, yellow means theres a 50/50 (might need correction) chance of gaining a point, and green is only about 20-25% chance. Grey means nothing of course. So, if you are skilling up mining, you may realise you are in an area where every single mineral vein is red. If this occurs, go back to the previous area you were levelling in and find as many yellow-named veins as possible. There is a period between level 75 and 125 that is hard to skill up, so an hour spent looking for tin veins around The Barrens when you get to that stage should see you past it.

Anti

Personally i would stick with the warlock. The reason being is that a warlock is very easy to play in both pve and pvp, and can be leveled up quickly. Plus the addition of the voidwalker and felreaver ( tanking pets ) will make grinding a half decent experience. I have my lock at 56 and i have no problems finding groups for instances. The mage when played correctly is a much more powerfull char, but its very rare to find one that is played right. As for your professions i would pick skinning as it makes a stupid ammount of money if you know how to play the AH properly, and mining. Enchanting and Herbalism i find are more suited for an alt char. As by the time you start leveling you will have the money to send to an alt to lvl them skills up.

If you really want to have some fun leveling pick a hunter. But stay away from tanking classes ( warrior/paladin ) or healers ( priest/paladin/shaman ) untill you get a bit more experience.

Einstein

wow- thanks for the responses! this forum rocks.

So how do i ditch professions or do i just start again?

Kiith

You can click 'Unlearn' on the skills tab beside the profession that you want to get rid of.

Psycopat

people always say warlocks are easy to play but while i agree to a certain extent you could say any class is easy to play, the thing that makes warlocks so 'imba' is if you know your class you will top the damage meters in raids. As an affliction Lock in raids you have a large amount of spell rotation to do which varies boss to boss and its all about apply'ing your dots at the correct time and in the correct order and being as mana efficient ass possible. On the other hand you have destro locks 'shadow mages' who output huge damage if they have enough crit in their gear, this spec involves no thinking, just pressing the shadow bolt button, in my guild for most bosses its destro locks topping damage meters, then affliction locks, then rogues, then mages followed by hunters. although this isnt always the case, for superemus i was the only affliction lock in the raid and i did 13% of the damage, the nearest to me was a destro lock on 9% and its the same for archimond every week.
When you consider how versatile locks are at end game pve/pvp mages seem slightly less usefull but definatly needed, mage pros include sheeping and being water vendors (just kidding) they do output some nice damage and have very good aoe however a warlocks seed of corruption is the best aoe in game.
It really all depends on what you which class you prefer and what you want out of wow. ive talked about warlocks in high level dungeons whereas 90% of people will never even reach them. I remember in kara mages usually topped the meters put in SSC/TK warlocks surged ahead. as far as pvp goes frost mages are really really nice. google 3v3 frost mage arena and watch how easilly 3 frost mages pwn up. although on the other hand sl/sl warlocks are really nice too.
as far as leveling to 10 goes i dunno why you find it so difficult, a friend of mine has a 63 mage and decided to level a warlock and found their damage output to mobs really big. he got to level 13 pretty damn quick. i personaly cant remember how long it took me to level but i do remember it being a good deal easier to level my lock to 70 than my warrior (although people consider warriors the hardest class to level).

Anyway, in my opinion level both to 20 and see which you prefer.

oh look at that i went on a big rant when i shoulda been doing project, damn wow wrecking my school work

Weidii

I'd recommend mages personally, they're just so much fun to play, especially when you start getting better CC and AoE spells.

If you want to use a class specifically for the pet, go with hunter.

BadCharlie

I my self have only 1 lvl 70 and that is a hunter. I know hunters dont or should not top the dps charts. But thats most hunters, my self im always on top no matter if its 10man raid or 25man & its been like that the past 3 or 4 months since we been doing the big Raids in SSC/Tk, Gruul, Mag, Za & even kara. And i mean every raid i gone & i would do 4 or 5 a week i have always finished 1st. Just saying even a hunter can out put some nice DPS.

But from talking to other class's and & also having low alts of all differint types. I go with very much what people are saying here. Mages are great fun but might not top the DPS meters but none the less they are still very good.

Warlocks if your any good should be top when it comes to damage done in a raid & also the fact they are imba in PvP would make me want to lvl 1 up to 70 fast.

To sum it up about people doing damage. You can have the best gear and dps class in the game, but if you suck at it your not going to do much. We 1 IMBA mage in our guild who keeps me on my toes all times.

Anti

BadCharlie wrote: »

I my self have only 1 lvl 70 and that is a hunter. I know hunters dont or should not top the dps charts. But thats most hunters, my self im always on top no matter if its 10man raid or 25man & its been like that the past 3 or 4 months since we been doing the big Raids in SSC/Tk, Gruul, Mag, Za & even kara. And i mean every raid i gone & i would do 4 or 5 a week i have always finished 1st. Just saying even a hunter can out put some nice DPS.

But from talking to other class's and & also having low alts of all differint types. I go with very much what people are saying here. Mages are great fun but might not top the DPS meters but none the less they are still very good.

Warlocks if your any good should be top when it comes to damage done in a raid & also the fact they are imba in PvP would make me want to lvl 1 up to 70 fast.

To sum it up about people doing damage. You can have the best gear and dps class in the game, but if you suck at it your not going to do much. We 1 IMBA mage in our guild who keeps me on my toes all times.

Hey BC,

Any chance you can link me to yoru armory page ? I'd love to see what gear and stats you have.

BadCharlie

Cant link it from work.

But just check up

Muppetkiller

Think their is only 2 of us, and im the only lvl 70 if i remember.
I do 389dps and pet another 167dps.
Crit is about 26.8%
BM spec
Thats is the stats i can remember off hand. During raids i will use pots and elixers to help my self out. And when buffed i do about 420dps and pet another 220dps. This is just on auto fire so when i do arcane, muti fire then your dps will go up. Also pop a trinket on CD and your flying.

I have have 3 T4, 1 T5, S2 Bow S3 Axe. & other good stuff. Check me out and if u dont see the T gear then its cause i must have logged out in my PvP gear which is crap.

copeyhagen

on my hunter i regulalry (60-70%) top the charts in bg and my gear is quite sh1te. im bm headin towards a 41/20 build. i went for the impr mana in mm instead of improved hunters mark.

i suck with my warrior but i rock with the hunter, every time i top the chart i take a screenie! ill have a look when i get home see how many times i have topped : )

if any1 wants to see him, hes lvl 60. copeshunt, laughing skull

yeh i know the name is crap!

he has a tonne of honour already, keepin it till he hits 70 to buy the merc stuff now..

BadCharlie

Link to my Armory
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Alonsus&n=Muppetkiller

Magill

You must have awful rogues if you top DPS everytime pal.

Hunters are a very good dps class idd, ive seen them top the meters often, but rogues are easily the Number 1 DPS raiding class in the game. Dont kid yourself if you think hunters/mages/warlocks or warriors are, rogues dominate the DPS meters on any fight that isn't unfriendly to melee, kara is abit urg, as most of the fights are short compared to 25mans, and groups are often not the greatest, but come SCC/TK/MH/BT rogues will equal gear just pwn face.

BadCharlie

Have to say our rogues must be crap then. Even when i did meet a real good 1 they never in the top 5 dps. Mostly they are in the middle. And our rogues are not badly geared at all.

I my self would pick a Warrior DPS over a Rogue DPS. We have 2 real good DPS warriors who are just imba, & out dps our rogues by a long way.

Oh my dps is now 395 and pet 175 . Did some more upgrades today.

nicryan

LordChessington wrote: »

It depends on the server economy, but overall, I found mining to be the most profitable profession, and I highly recommend it. In the early stages, copper bars (not the ore) in stacks of 20 sell at a decent price. Tin and bronze bars sell at an ok price too, but before you start making stacks of bronze, check the auction house to see which would reap a better price - if a stack of tin and a stack of copper add up to more than twice the price of a stack of bronze, then don't make bronze (unless you want to get your mining skill up for that level)

I'll agree with you completly that gathering profs are the most profitable early on - at lvl 70 you might decide to drop one or both for other professions (I had mining and skinning up to lvl 60 - I lvled pre-bc and dropped em for tailoring and enchanting) - but you're wrong on selling them as bars. Don't do this. Sell them as ores and you'll make more money becuase there's always alts about trying to powerlevel jewelcrafting which needs the ores to prospect. I just checked the auction house on my server (laughing skull - horde), a stack of 20 copper bars was selling for 1.75g and a stack of 20 copper ore was selling for 2g. Its not much of a difference but that is for the lowest level thing to gather. For BC ores/bars the gap is much much bigger (when you concider that it takes 2 ores to make 1 bar)

Also, as a dps class both locks and mages are equivalent mostly. When raiding I find that its always one of 2 people on top of the damage meters 1 being me (mage) the other being a lock. But I reckon thats gonna change next time cause I've specced back into frost and so he won't take advantage of my stacked scorches.

-EDIT: also, a lock will do far better in pvp due to the fact that a lock can pvp quite well with a raiding spec. Mages need to pick either POM pyro spec or deep frost to be effective at pvp - neither of which is a good raiding spec. The best raiding specs for mages are either arc/frost (48/0/11) or fire (2/48/11). While a pvp speced mage will be either arc frost (17/0/44) or pom pyro (21/40/0).

-Nic

jason&arthur

if you want to do the best ranged dps with minimal effort & no support required, get a lock and spec 0/21/40.
if you want to do best dps with a bit of effort & rely on 2~ other classes, get a rogue and spec 20/41/0
if you want a combination pick a hunter and spec BM.

those are the 3 best dps classes currently, anyone who tells you different is prolly stuck in kara where the person who knows what buttons to press half the time wins.
however mages are starting to scale up alot with haste, so within a few weeks (i.e. when they complete their sunwell gear) it might prove pretty awesome. but they would be a risky choice, locks have very solid multipliers so will always scale well.

if you want to play for fun, take a mage. blink is just the most fun button ever.

Anti

jason&arthur wrote: »

if you want to do the best ranged dps with minimal effort & no support required, get a lock and spec 0/21/40.
if you want to do best dps with a bit of effort & rely on 2~ other classes, get a rogue and spec 20/41/0
if you want a combination pick a hunter and spec BM.

those are the 3 best dps classes currently, anyone who tells you different is prolly stuck in kara where the person who knows what buttons to press half the time wins.
however mages are starting to scale up alot with haste, so within a few weeks (i.e. when they complete their sunwell gear) it might prove pretty awesome. but they would be a risky choice, locks have very solid multipliers so will always scale well.

if you want to play for fun, take a mage. blink is just the most fun button ever.

I dont agree with a BM spec hunter being a good dpsers. Out of interest we did a quick kara run today, and a bm spec hunter in the raid managed to do less then 50% of the damage i did. I was bm spec from 1-58 and as soon as i changed to MM i noticed my damage had doubled !

Dustaz

The 'top dps' will totally depend on the fight and the gear the particpants are wearing. If its melee-centric, rogues WILL win. If its a 'caster' fight, then it will be locks or possibly mages.

The current benchmark for dps is Brutallus in sunwell plateau:
http://wowwebstats.com/1n2o3d3sufrjc?s=9501-9840&m

thats Elitist Jerks (one of the top guilds in the world) wws report. As you can see a rogue wins but the mage and lock arent far behind. Were currently on this boss and i can say without any shadow of a doubt that this boss will test your ability to squeeze every last possible dps out of your character.

But yeh, if your a hunter and your top of the meters, theres something VERY wrong with your guild.

BadCharlie

Anti Bm spec is the best DPS spec for a hunter. I can say this with 100%. Im now doing 401dps pet 176dps & over 27% crit. MM is good but makes your pet hit like a girl. If you want to get the most out of BM make sure you use your pet in fights and it does not die during the fight.

I have met other Bm hunters and they only get half my total dps during raids.

It does come down to Gear but also something you cant buy Skill.

Our guild is good i think and some very fine dps people in it. Mages and locks always close to me but somehow im always on top. Our dps meters match up after end of fights so it not just mine telling me lies . But yes other hunters in our guild when in raids are mid table.

Also keep in mind some fights do not suit hunters at all, due to not been able to use pet ect...

Anyways mages = fun
Locks = Dps

Dustaz

Our guild is good i think and some very fine dps people in it. Mages and locks always close to me but somehow im always on top.

wws or theyre dire.

copeyhagen

nicryan wrote: »

I just checked the auction house on my server (laughing skull - horde)

im laughing skull horde side too. whats ur toon named? i honestly thought i was the only irish player on the realm!! on horde side anyway.

Ivan

400 dps /= very fine dps, wws not really needed imho.