Mage vs Warlock?Follow

Warlock dps > mage dps - at least when we talk end game content.

Warlocks put LESS strain on healers than mages - if the healers mana is looking low, or they are in some way troubled, the warlock can drain life to regen health, mages can do uhmm bandages? And let me just add ZOMGLETTSAUCE BE A DRUID INSTEAD!!!!

EDIT: I was well aware what CoC meant - just wanted to point out that pol forgot it. I am after all specc'ed 44 pts in frost, and have played wow since release, so not knowing what CoC is would be kinda fail ;)

Edited, Feb 7th 2008 10:23am by krqllebqlle

I was little depressed after reading this thread, then last night I went into Kara and got multiple 4k+ crits and got one 4565. I've only started doing Kara so that was a big deal for me. I'm a frost mage 17/0/44. The buffs I got put me at about 1200 bonus dmg not including the airman'ribbon of gallentry, trinket,icy veins,spell blasting. It's like crack getting those crits. I almost died one-time cause I didn't want to stop shooting. Ice-block saved me.

I also pvp and I can say locks are the hardest for me to deal with. If I can get in a silence and sheep I can beat them. If I do that I can bring out the elemental pop the trinket for extra damage and then do the ranged frost nova for shatter combo frostbolt/ice lance. Lock will then death coil. I ice-block out. Usally they expect me to stay in ice-block for the duration but i pop out right away - usally cd is up for silence and i cast it frost nova shatter combo - then fire blast, ice lance until dead

As I said this isn't what usally happens but its the only way i've found to beat them.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Quel%27dorei&n=Varilhigh

Thanks Anobix, I hope we can manage, I do always bring 3 mages, but we only have 2 warlocks currently, so I plan on skipping Magtheridon.
To clarify on my previous statement though, after all the CC is accounted for, and I'm purely looking for caster DPS, I favor warlocks over mages.

I'd like to add that despite the various semi-successful tactics against warlocks, a pvp (read: 17/0/44) specced mage, will have no realistic chance of beating an equally geared and skilled pvp (read: 27/34/0, or any variation on the classic sl/sl spec) specced warlock with his felhunter out.

OT: So uhm, where should we begin post-gruul? I was thinking about going the Lurker Below, and Hydross once we get our nature tank some more primal lives. Should we even be trying Magtheridon with our 2 warlocks or do we need more?
Should we try Void Reaver asap? Do we really need 5 tanks for Al'ar? Is ZA progress a good way to judge how far we can get in 25 mans (3/6 on farm atm)?

Hmm well it seems that everyone is going for the Warlock class as being the one with an edge over the mage. Which, in all due respect, I must admit is often true.

But in reality, it's all really a matter of inches and degrees... Which Spec you have, what kind of gear, the level you are at, plus what kind of preparation you have...

Why I say that? Quite simply because locks usually have as much a hard time killing me as I have a hard time killing them.

They can DoT me and run away or spelllock me or whatever other special things they have against me but lets not forget a mage isn,t out of options either... I usually always have my mana gem conjured, and quite a few trinkets.

In WSG 3 Locks tried to kill me as I was going for the flag, one fears me, and they all DoT me. Well Since i'm an UD I broke out with WoTF, then applied Ice Block (all dots were gone) broke it, blinked away, applied my ice shield and ran away while spamming my decurse. I survived and even managed to kill one of them while running away. (ran, hide, tried to counter Offense and so on, we ran around for like 3 mins like that lol)

Now I must admit that me killing one was sheer luck, but I still would have survived and they,d have to run after me and were pretty powerless for a min there...

As far as one on one is concerned, I wouldn,t know really, Since I never dueled a Warlock per say...

let,s just give mage a chance as a class, they,re not THAT bad lol...

Thanks Anobix, and indeed, sorry for going off topic :P.

One last question, does BigWigs or DeadlyBossMod do the same as SolarianAlarm?

I use BigWigs, it works okay, but doesn't turn your screen blue like vralarm/solarionalarm do (it just says at the top who has it and a timer for when they are going to blow).

I will see if I can remember to fraps the next one that we do, I will probably have to kill my 1920x1200 res though :-(

Edited, Feb 8th 2008 9:45am by Anobix

One of the things that I love about the mage is that, rather than high armor, a 20% mitigation, a pet distracting, and loads of stamina, it has defensive abilities.

The mage has been referred to as a glass cannon, and while this is true, people who play correctly can make their mage last long.

Though Frost is more defensive, the addition of Ice Block to all mages has made Fire mages even more survivable (in PvP and Solo/5-man situations).

You can teleport 20 yards away from the danger.
You can root the danger for 8 seconds.
You can snare it down 40% speed, 60%, I don't know, I hardly use Frost spells anymore aside from Frost Nova.
You may have a shield to absorb some damage.
You have a horribly inefficient shield to absorb some damage (but mages are made of mana).
You may be able to daze your target for 6 seconds.
You may be able to disorient your target for 2 seconds (it sounds short, but it's actually really helpful).
Your armor may slow down your enemy's movement speed and attack speed, may root the enemy, may damage the enemy per attack, and may stun the enemy for 2 seconds.
Your fire spells may stun the enemy for 2 seconds.
You may be able to have 50% more movement speed for 8 seconds while someone's beating on you.

I probably missed some things.
But yeah, a mage takes reaction to actually play effectively. I played my friend's resto shaman for a bit-- it's ridiculous, I simply get beat on rather than having to react, I just load up Earth Shield, have Nature's Whatever heal him for 10% of his health every 5 seconds, and start whittling away... slowly...

@Riven Kito, lol i thought you were complaining about losing against locks :S, locks can own mages, it depends on gear+Skill like every other class, except well geared hunters, no skill needed to own IMO.

MY first char i started was a mage . never played wow . jsut started it a year ago and rolled mage. now i got 4/5 s3 and im lovin it . offcourse i spendt ages learning how to time all right . and guess what. most classes get owned by mages. in the 2 vs 2 my favorite partner is a rogue . if we meet a lock he is dead in ay case . ***** a healer cant outheal me and a rogue. mage is far way harder to play then a lock . i liked the challenge to be skilled . and i did it . got some nice rated arean teams and no problems vs any classes so far . except a damn bm specced hunter. otherwise locks and all those others are just a target dummy. but offc a skilled lock beats me . cause not al locks are noobs. some actually learn the class .


for my point of view . a mage can be far better the na warlock in many ways . specially in areane with all the cc you can have . for an undead mage like me fera is no issue . will of the forsaken is like a second pvp trinket with a 2 min cooldown . dont think of mage a crap class . cause 1 time you end up gettin owned by 1 .

WoW, I'm baffled.... you have 4/5 s3 (which is like 30 resil and 1k hp more than some s1 mage) and simply by hitting buttons fast and using the right spell at the right time you down skilled and geared locks, that us normal mages cannot work past 75%, with a broken hand?
Tell me more... not saying you are a liar, but a bit more specific how you beat similar geared locks who would then have 14k hp, 500 resil and 1k spelldamage, while you have max. 900 sd in PvP gear. Do you really mean sl/sl? And is "skilled" or "good" a term you use for any lock with 400+ resil? Because I must say, that I have no prblems owning blue geared locks with my full epic mage (mostly PvP). I stand no chance vs s1/s2 sl/sl locks.

Noone said we completely suck, what I said was mostly sarcasm, but there is a little bit of trouth to every sentence I said in my last post. Some of it is fact, and reported by people who really tried. Its also a fact, that many mages have problems vs several classes (rogues, some healers, locks, hunters) altogether too many classes actually.

You might be owning as hard as you say, or you might not, I cannot tell without any clip of your gameplay, or even an armory link, but the way you are bosting makes me believe you aren't. Nearly everyone who says he can own everything exept for one thing is lying.

I can just speak for myself, and what I see is: there is not soooo insanely much more items to get, that my stats and resil will rise out of sight in the future, even if I get everything I'd like to get. And when I fight locks their hp doesn't seem to go down, while my buffs and shields fade, my hp goes down without any chance of recovery (unlike for the warlock) and I get silenced everytime I could place a nuke.

I'm sure there are people with a better performance than I can put down, but I do not suck IMO, and when I cannot even bring him down to 70% I doubt that just being a litte faster and more experience/geared will EASILY drop the lock like a stone. Same thing with other classes. I have tried rogues in duels to learn stuff, and while doing so I even watched a s3 mage try the same rogue with no success... Probably you are just much better than even some of the better mages, or full of crap, seeing how I cannot tell which, I already apologize now, in case I'm wrong, but I just do not think so.

Huh, you use Icy Chill on yourself??

I know: Icy Veins and Winter's chill (which is a debuff I can put on my target)... Icy Chill is as far as I know some enchant, If I remember right. Would surprise me if I'm wrong though.
I also know my keybindings, and as far as my latency is not 1k+ (which it was for all the last week) I'm playing fairly decent.
I dunno, what locks you are fighting, but as soon as I blow silence and elemental at the start, here is what happens if he even has half a brain:

His pet silences me, even while he is silenced (which is what makes em so unfair). I have blown silence already, and as soon as we both stop being locked down, we both have taken nearly no damage. He banishes my ele, while I cannot do **** about it (in case I got no granades or other stuff). Now he dots me up, which I can counter by decoursing myself, or IB (I still do not see why it is fair that I have to blow such a CD on some lousy DoTs) and he will do fear, as long as he can count on CS to be on CD.

Now I blow my WotF or trinket (I prefer WotF since trinket is better kept for other stuff). But I'm just forced to play defensely all the time, while he is dominating. My dps is lousy, his hp is plenty, and his dps is starting to hurt right when I have blown IB. Probably I can even manage to get some ILs out, when my ele comes back to life, or I can get some nova out, but as soon as I can cast anything his pet will silence me again. If I can do any damage to him (my PvP-gear is not exactely what I'd call a great source of damage) he pops 3k healthstones and lifedrain+ deathcoil....

If he is a total noob, I can win, but with felpuppy, any skill at all, and decent gear (at some point in specc and gear they just stop taking any real damage from me at all), I stand no chance. Sad but true. I'm not a noob, and with some shattercombo in the beginning I can do in many on the non-uber locks, but at full s1 it starts being hard. (I wouldn't say impossible, but pretty close)

I dunno, if its true, that locks have a hard time against some melee classes, but if we do the mage-lock comparison, I must really say, that one should roll a lock instead of a mage.

Locks do not need real skill to beat the average mage IMO, but thats a question of taste and viewpoint. Mages used to be a class that took much skill to master, but rewarded you with the ability to really own in PvP, and also the meters. Now that this reward is missing, I must say that I'll go on learning and playing my mage, but I'll recommend a lock:

-Their image is cooler
-Their gear looks better
-Easier to master (IMO)
-More DPS if specced and geared
-Better in most PvP situations
-Pretty same, if not better utility in some groups (stam buff, seduce, chainfear, dps, banish, healthstones, surviveability, enslave)

My bad. I have six characters to play and limited time. Looked up DC cooldown and must've seen wrong.



I'll take **** gear for 500, Alex.

I've got a lot of characters, the ones in my signature only represent the higher leveled ones. I know most weaknesses and strengths of the other classes, but I have almost zero experience in the Arena, because it's not the kind of PvP I'm after. It's multiplayer duels and the reason why fun spells get nerfed through the ground.

That's where a lot of people will claim that I suck, I'm a noob and that I need to go cry in a corner of Alterac Valley while they do "real" PvP. PvP is player vs. player and putting a definition on it is kinda like saying "I'm a ******* moron, excuse me while I hit myself with a brick."

Sure, teaming up with 9-39 random players and going against a somewhat equal amount of enemy players isn't as coordinated as a 2v2 Arena match. But that's what I like about massive PvP scenarios. You get it all. You get the true sense of battle, not the gladiator glory crap.

Therefore, all my posts regarding PvP is based around a BG scenario. I was actually around before Battlegrounds were put in the game. I was around when PvP was something you experienced out in Azeroth, out in the open, while questing. The large scale PvP scenarios took place in Hillsbrad, when Horde and Alliance players clashed in epic battles that caused the servers to fall to their bleeding knees while crying out in pain.

That's how I remember PvP. That's how PvP is supposed to be in my eyes. That's the feeling I'm looking for and the only place I get a sense of it is in Alterac Valley and the other Battlegrounds.

So, yeah, my knowledge of the game is incomplete with regards to Arena tactics. Pardon my limitations. However, my knowledge of the various classes goes beyond The Burning Crusade, beyond Patch 1.6 and back to the goddam closed US beta. So while it is obvious that I cannot remember every single detail (I don't have eidic memory) one must conclude that the more obvious reason why I get shredded to **** in PvP is because of my crap gear.

And yes, it is crap. I'm working on getting the "welfare epics," but being Alliance, BG PvP is kinda like poking red-hot needles in my eyes while laughing manically at a French comedy show, calming my nerves by pouring down one bourbon shot after another. It's a ******* mess, to be honest.

Still, it's the closest thing to PvP as I prefer it. Large scale and chaotic. Now, that's war.

As for Warlocks having more instant cast spells than the Mage, I was primarily referring to offensive spells and certain defensive spells, such as Frost Nova and Blink, not to forget the various shields. Here's a summary:

MAGE.

Instant cast core spells (offensive):

Fire Blast
Arcane Explosion
Cone of Cold
Ice Lance

Instant cast core spells (defensive):

Frost Nova
Ice Block
Mana Shield
Blink
Counterspell
Remove Lesser Curse

Instant cast talented spells (defense/offensive):

Blast Wave
Dragon's Breath
Ice Barrier
Water Elemental
Slow

That's off the top of my head. Forgive me if I've left some out.

WARLOCK.

Instant cast core spells (offensive):

Curse of Agony
Lash of Pain (Succubus)
Death Coil

Instant cast core spells (defensive):

Curse of Tongues
Curse of Weakness
Spell Lock (Felhunter)
Consume Magic (Felhunter)
Sacrifice (Voidwalker)
Seduction (Succubus)
Death Coil

Instant cast talented spells (defensive/offensive):

Improved Corruption
Siphon Life
Conflagrate (Immolate)
Cleave (Felguard)
Intercept (Felguard)
Soul Link

Off the top of my head, again. Please do flaunt at my failure if I forgot some core offensive spell with an instant cast. I have a tendency to not know my class very well.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but since the Warlock has two (three with the right minion out) instant cast offensive spells, how does that make the Warlock's instant cast damage more powerful than the Mage's? I'm curious to know.

Improved Corruption, Siphon Life and Conflagrate are all talents, plus Conflagrate requires another spell to be active first (1.5 second cast, but still).

I fail to see how Curse of Agony and Lash of Pain, over the course of 24 seconds, combined with a Death Coil, does more damage than 24 seconds of Ice Lance, Fire Blast, Cone of Cold, Arcane Explosion spam. Sure, the Mage will go OOM faster, but that's not the topic here.

And Kavekk, I'd like you to meet a Rogue with just half a brain someday. If you think trinketing out of Cheap Shot or Kidney Shot is the bomb, have a piece of Gouge, Kick and Cloak of Shadows, will ya? Not to mention he can trinket out of your Fear. And yeah, Rogues are tough as a caster class, but how about Druids with their Maim and Bash and 1.0 second attack speed? Or Warriors with their Fear immunity and massive crits? Or Enhancement Shamans with their damn dual Windfury and Earth Shocks? Or Hunters with the goddam pet who goes into God Mode if they're spec'd Beast Mastery or Silencing Shot if they're spec'd Marksmanship? Or Discipline Priests with their bloody reflective shields and massive heals, topped off with damage reducing talents? Or Holy Paladins with their ******* bubble and efficient healing or Retribution Paladins with their cleansing and stunning and bubbling and massive crits and *headsplode*

Wall of text. And I could do the same thing about every other class. Rock, scissor and paper. No class is better than the rest, but all classes are better than the one you play. Has to do with grass being greener on the other side.

Meh, I give up. Warlocks clearly have better instant cast damage. Death Coil crits just rock my socks.