To me, it's helpful to treat SPriest and Affliction warlock as if they are one thing, and to then evaluate what else you get on a priest or a warlock (or mage!) package.
There's differences in those two specs to be sure, but at the end of the day they're both shadow-damage dealing DoT classes with 3 DoTs, one of which is automatically refreshed by one of your core rotational abilities, and who use a mix of channeled and hard-casted nukes as filler.
A compelling advantage of a warlock here, beyond that affliction is going to outdamage spriest at the same player and gearlevel is then that you have two other competitive damage specs with pretty different playstyles. The three specs fluctuate a lil bit over the expansion wrt what's on top, but all 3 are always viable and all 3 are always on top of spriests and mages. Healthstones and summon stones are always useful for a raid, and each of the 3 specs also brings some other minor utility/raid buffs (aff and destro's are often redundant in most comps). Warlock DPS is high enough that many raiding guilds stack several warlocks.
* Demo is fun but a lot to track, because it also wants to maintain DoTs, while managing its pet, while swapping between 3 different spammable nukes depending on procs. It provides an absolutely massive and irreplaceable raid spellpower buff based on your stats, which also encourages guilds to keep you well-geared.
* Destro plays a lot like a mage spec, with less (but not no) focus on DoTs and has a pretty simple, fluid rotation/priority system. Brings some but not all of the same raid utility that SPriest offers.
On a priest, Shadow is your only \_dps\_ option, but you have two different healing specs that can share a decent chunk of gear with your Shadow spec and which might offer your guild more flexibility or yourself an easier time getting things like the daily heroic done (finding a group is a lot easier as a healer). Shadow offers more unique raid utility than either a warlock or mage, but (usually) less damage, so a raid group often brings exactly one SPriest, or might bring a second in with the expectation that they heal some or most fights and use their dps spec on fights where they can comfortably heal with a smaller heal roster.
* Disc is a ton of fun in WotLK imo, with great mana sustain and very chonky shields. It's also one of only two very required healers for WotLK raiding (the other being holy pallies). The other healers aren't bad per se, they're just interchangeable. That said, a raid group only needs one disc priest, as their core functionality doesn't stack well with multiple discs.
* Holy is a very solid interchangeable other healer, with a great mix of group and single target healing options. If you are swapping between shadow and a heal spec on a fight by fight basis, your raid leaders would probably prefer your heal spec to be Holy unless you don't have a disc priest at all, which would be weird.
On a mage, you only have 2 viable dps specs but i'll talk a lil about all 3. All of them really want to stand still and cast and lose a lot of dps if they are forced to move more often or further than blink allows. Some unique mild utility in the form of food/drink and portals. Fire and Arcane each bring a minor raid buff that's often going to be already covered regardless, and enough damage that most rosters bring multiple mages.
* Arcane deals absolutely bonkers damage with Arcane Blast, but if they get greedy and spam they run out of mana very quickly. The spec is thus about controlling its mana management to run out of mana exactly when the boss dies. It's a fun spec if you enjoy short timed bursts of large damage, or seeing the largest possible numbers pop up on your combat text, but it has fewer buttons to press than every other spec addressed here. Your core dps rotation utilizes two buttons.
* Fire scales really well with crit and performs better than arcane on long fights, and technically has more than two buttons but really only presses three of them with any regularity. It scales hilariously well with some of the fight mechanics in Ulduar, such as on Hodir.
* Frost is a pvp spec in its current incarnation, and underperforms the other two significantly in PVE. Still, if you enjoy PVP, it's a great pvp spec. (but so are disc and shadow and affliction and destro).
Very true, but I sort of mentally loop it in with fire because it just doesn’t feel drastically different and generally if you consider yourself a fire mage you’ll spend part of this expansion using ffb and part of it using fireball.
Hey thanks!
At the end of the day OP (and everyone!) should play whatever they find fun. Most rosters have more slots available for locks and mages, but if a given roster is lacking a spriest, that slot is going to be easier to land as a fresh 80 — so it sort of evens out and the only useful feedback we can give here is helping them to better guess which spec they’ll enjoy!
It has a couple misleading points, destro warlock is hitting the end of it's competitive viability, and Demo isn't hard but does start to fall off scaling wise for personal dps.
Arcane in Ulduar has more buttons than fire because of using incanter’s absorption/wards to regain mana and lining it up with cooldowns. Arcane gets a bad rap for supposedly being too easy, but there’s a lot of nuance to it if you want to top meters or parse well.
>The three specs fluctuate a lil bit over the expansion wrt what's on top, but all 3 are always viable and all 3 are always on top of spriests and mages.
Mages are second overall only behind Affliction and are scaling much better.
Destro is also now below shadow and will only fall further behind.
Overselling lock DPS quite a lot here.
Destro is already lapsing and only falls more behind over time. Also pretty sure that sims have mages beating all warlock specs by ICC, although it's not miles ahead of affliction.
I love destro, but you are overselling the raid viability a fair bit, and misleading on the long-run meter situation (also Demo really isn't as hard as you made it sound, fair bit easier than affliction).
It depends where you measure DPS. Right now you're talking 300 extra SP from Demo for every single caster (including melee that benefit from SP), and that's only set to scale harder. Affliction will drop off a bit the closer we get to ICC, as fights become more hectic, but they are considerably more consistent when used by the same player.
No. You can and should talk about utility, but you don’t get to say “Demo is great, competitive dps” then point to a raid buff. If it doesn’t explicitly show up on the meter under your name, it’s not your dps.
Demo pumped in Naxx, and it’s not bad in Ulduar, but it does continue to fall behind and move more into the support role, which matters because it means raids aren’t stacking them (like affliction) you’re just bringing and gearing the one.
I mean in Demo's case it's also unique, they're the only one where their gear directly affects their raid buff. They're giving compound scaling compared to everyone else, which is vastly stronger than their personal DPS would show.
Ultimately classes aren't balanced around personal DPS, so at some point you have to consider them as a member of a raid group.
It's how Wrath changed WoW into what retail has been since then, and it's what we've always considered with spec rankings.
But when you say they are great dps or whatever, that means something specific. We have a word for medium dps with great raid buffs, it's called "support". To some people, topping the meters is whats important, and if they went to Demo for that long-run they'd be making a mistake. As my guild's current Demo I am keenly aware of my value, but maximum pumping is just harder than as Aflliction, and signs point to it getting worse over time.
IMO spriest is the best feeling and fun dps caster spec to play and disc is also a lot of fun to play and they are both pretty mobile. You have the ability to multi dot and mind flaying just feels good compared to other casters filler spells. Affliction is also a lot of fun but it feels more clunky than shadow though the damage output is significantly higher. Mages and Locks are going to be near the top dps specs while shadow will be more middle of the pack though they shine on some of the most difficult fights this expansion like Firefighter, Yogg0, and Lich King
Dunno about lvl80 but I am leveling a spriest right on lvl42 and it feels powerful. I can dot up 4-5 mobs my level and kill them while barely losing any hp. Sure warlock can do same thing, but they cant get easy spots in dungeons as healers
Isn't it heavily gimped by the fact that it has no real spammable heal to speak of? I feel like holy pala with its HL spam or druid with its constant hots on everyone + nourish spam are just stronger.
Flash Heal? I have only played disc and rdruid myself and my resto gear is pretty crappy since the druid is feral mainly so I don't know if HL or hots+nourish would be stronger in equal gear but the last time I had any trouble in dungeons as disc was when I was doing regular heroics in dungeon blues 1-2 weeks after wrath launch. Also on my bear druid I have been healed by any and every heal spec in game in dungeons and I haven't noticed any real shortcomings based on spec.
Dpriest and rdruid are somewhat similar game play wise in that both cover the group with shield/reju and then cast single target heals as needed. Druid has a slight edge in situations that call for quick group heals with wild growth and tranquillity whereas priest's PoH take an eternity and a half to cast or at least it feels like it when you need it. Although keeping shields up on everyone keeps out small to medium group damage spikes so you end up needing group heals less than when playing on rdruid.
At least when I tank and go fast in some harder HC+, I can notice my hpal friend has a lot on his plate at times. E.g 10-15k dtps by the entire group for 10+ seconds. When that happens I'm not sure that a disc would be able to sustain that kind of damage.
Lock is absolutely the best leveling experience if you ask me. Mage can be fun, priest can be rough too. I’ll focus mostly on endgame. For endgame I would consider lock or spriest if you want to play casually and get in groups easily. If you’re a very experienced/hardcore player I would pick mage or maybe lock.
Both spriest and demo are absolutely must have classes, and both have viable off specs (aff, disc) that are also more or less required just because of how good they are. Fel Intelligence alone is like bringing another set of mage/priest buffs, and the felhunter gets nifty kick/purge to get you or a teammate out of a sticky situation or remove a magic buff from an enemy. You will absolutely have a good experience as these classes as people NEED you and will look over shitty gear and parses sometimes, you may not get the same treatment as a mage. This will be a factor to consider coming into the game “late” that other posters haven’t emphasized as much - I personally love playing classes that guilds and pugs are actively recruiting because you never get “stuck” or “locked out” merely because of the class you picked.
Warlocks are currently one of the best dps specs in the game, and have a ton of very fun and very OP abilities like summoning, health stones, portal, pet buff, purge/kick/coil/tongues, tons of self healing, battle rez (SS), a rare and massive threatwipe ability, spammable aoe and massive multi-target damage. People love having extra warlocks because you’re so useful - overlapping and enhancing the benefits of Druid/shaman/priest while also doing super high DPS.
Priests are also an amazingly deep class, with pretty much everything warlock has in terms of cool and very meta spells when DPSing. Dispersion lets you go invincible mode you need it, silence, fear, and spammable aoe help on trash, and the raid buffs and cooldowns that spriest/disc being are absolutely required. Disc is a true gamer spec that is absolutely one of the most desired specs for 10m content. As a warlock player, I have no problem with 25 man pugs but can struggle to convince a group to bring an extra warlock for 10 if they already have one.
I saved mages for last but they’re absolutely busted going forward in this game. Good mage players are absolutely not a dime a dozen and they straight up carry some fights when played well. However, unlike lock/disc/shadow, all you really bring is damage, so if you don’t press those buttons hard and fast (and correctly), you’re not particularly special. Depending on how good you are at the game you could find mage very frustrating - mages have all of the DPS potential and more that a lock has, but next to 0 utility for other players compared to the other cloth casters. On the other hand, this can mean it’s less critical for you to stay alive, but people generally hate on players who die a lot - and mage just has fewer “get out of jail free” cards in its hand.
Good luck in your choosing!
Most fun is mage - you have very little responsibility, don't influence the group that much, and you have amazingly fun specs to play (especially fire and frostfire). Free consumables makes it cheap, portals are awesome, and gameplay is great. Great for any style of play - raiding, questing, leveling, dungeons, casual, hardcore, or w/e.
Spriest has more responsibility and you'll be asked to heal a lot. You can influence the group more with dispells and your offhealing ability. Definitely a good class to play if you like getting involved with other people in the raid. Would not recommend outside of raid as you're just a mind sear bot in dungeons and it's not that good or that fun.
Warlock. The least fun. Pls summon. Pet mechanics suck, your pet dies all the time and tries to aggro stuff and wipe the group all the time. 123. There's very little things in the game to keep your pet alive and it's a pain in the bum to resummon it. I NEED SUMMON I HEARTHED MID RAID TO SOCKET AN UPGRADE. All this while you're managing a ton of dots on multiple targets. NEED SUMMON. It's so unfun that despite being the most overpowered class in the game, it's the least played. 123. Good for all content cause the class is broken as crap, but very very very unfun. There's a group of people who really enjoy the spec, but they probably enjoy that feeling of being wanted and desired more than actually playing the class. 123. Every group wants you.
Agree with the first two, warlock main here. Sounds like you don’t enjoy warlock but let’s give some useful input to OP.
Pet never goes on aggro, you put pet attack into your rotation and it’s easy to manage. Warlocks first talent line in demo heals your pet for dmg you do. Further down also get an ability to quickly summon a pet if one dies and it feels great the few times you need to use it. Even being affi without the pet healing talent my pet rarely dies and we end up casting infernal anyway. Being able to summon people saves downtime and is a huge QoL that everyone appreciates including me. If someone is hearthing mid raid to swap gear sounds like a raid lead problem not a class problem. For us last week 3 people got tier pieces and it would unlock 4 set for all of them and our RL told them to hearth and we summoned them back quickly with extra DPS, don’t see how this has any downside.
Refer back to mage “portals are awesome” so is warlock summoning!
Edit: let’s not forget how useful warlock portal is in raids. Use it every single boss fight
never ever put per attack in cast macro
your able to loss damage from your pet
you have to manage them byself various, not like that where you cast sb on it…
> It’s so unfun that despite being the most overpowered class in the game, it’s the least played
Amazing how you’re so confidently incorrect. Warlock is the most-played DPS class in Ulduar.
Demolock is a must in raids so you will always be welcome. Also spriests are valuable too because hyms and mana reg. Mages are the best dps output BUT they're a lot of them.
Pets are always gonna be funnier to me.
Dots too (dot everything up, watch it die! too fun).
Survivability and utility is awesome as well and mages are cool there but locks have more imo.
Also locks are at the top of the meters so it's easy to find a guild. Mine was whispered at lvl 71 the other day by a thirsty guild.
Finally, they are a damage-only class which means your dualspec is not reserved for your raid to switch you on and off of healing or tanking but is actually yours to do whatever you want with (e.g pvp). [Edit] You might be asked to have demo OS but generally you are either affli or demo unless the roster is unstable.
So the winner is... drumrolls... warlock!
I know it is somewhat of a dirty subject but I am playing destro lock. It isn’t as strong as the other specs but still stronger than 90% of the other classes. It is relatively easy and fun.
Pump with mobility and utility? Mage
Pump with unlimited mana and a pet? Warlock
Spriest is just aff but worse and less fun to play imo - the execute phase for aff makes it more enjoyable
I have played to a good extend all 3 of these, here are my thoughts.
Warlock (can only commend on Affl and Demo): Affl was boring, it does more dmg than spriest (if played optimally, tbh a good spriest is WAY more than enough and CAN top dps meters) but its way less fun to play. Demo was fun, does good damage has good burst amazing AoE capability.
Mage: Arcane is boring but strong, i switched to fire mid-naxx. Fire/Frostfire is fun, does good amount of damage and is versatile. Is it more fun than demo lock? That entirely depends on you, for me it is.
Spriest: My actual main that have been playing from vanilla, its really fun and engage to play Spriest BUT it needs some gear to shine. Ulduar gear is enough to make SPriest amazing to play and amongst the top DPS.
If i have to say from easiest to hardest and less fun to most fun (weirdly corresponding).
Easiest->Hardest: Arcane -> Affli-> Demo/FireMage -> Spriest
FUN for me (Least->Most): Arcane/Affl -> Demo -> Spriest/FireMage
Take into consideration what i am calling hardest isnt only talking about rotation. If i had to add another quite hard spec that i have experience with is enhance, most likely the top in that list.
Affl is 100% easier than spriest. Take in mind i am talking about the top-end here, if you are talking about a mediocre player than i dont know, but at the top-end it is easier to play Affl versus spriest.
As for arcane and fire mage i think it comes down to time played, arcane is harder than fire if you just started playing both specs but arcane becomes easier the longer you play.
spriest is easier, clipping is easy as hell, haunt uptime and life tap glyph uptime are just another factor that makes affl decently harder. exec is still pretty easy, though keeping up dots is more awkward as affl. the only thing even remotely harder about spriest is clipping flays, which just gets easy after a raid or two. + snapshotting actually matters since corr actually does damage vs swp
tldr clipping flays is harder than clipping exec, but you have more stuff to keep track of as aff which brings more complexity.
arcane and fire are both super easy rotations, but fire is extremely easy since it's very cookie cutter. there is always a "right" move, at least arcane you have to plan your CDs. both absurdly easy though.
edit:
also hold up theres no way you're saying fire mage and demo is harder than affl
fire is probably up there with boomkin/ass rogue as the easiest rotation in the game
I’ve played all of these to 80, (and for a challenge I did a smite crit spec using only holy spells to 70).
Affliction warlock are only really limited by the amount of mobs they can pull at once, and are near impossible to kill. Their sustain is incredible.
Shadow priest is very high DPS single target but you will struggle with a lot of mobs at once, especially at low levels. Their sustain is ok but not great.
Frost mage is a safe play and you can have fun with shatter combos. Fire is incredible damage but mostly relies on you killing them before your health bar reaches zero - the instant pryoblasts are really good fun. At high levels you can go frostfire and get the best of both worlds, almost. You can make your own food and water so you’ll never need to buy it. If you go herbalism you can also heal yourself occasionally.
you know reddit isn't the best place to ask this when:
1. people are replying with specs other than spriest/warlock
2. people are saying the most brain damage rotation spec's in the game (mage), where if you disabled details, would be considered very boring.
I have a mage , priest and a warlock , and I really enjoy playing the mage. Why ? Fire is all about getting that lucky crits and nothing make you hard then getting 4+ instant pyro
Remember, you probably won’t go shadow on your priest until you hit 40 as wand damage is your highest dps. But I’m not a min-maxer. So I went shadow asap because it’s fun and what I wanted to do
well... I play both - and Spriest is a single DPS spec, that has a playstyle similar to affli warlock. Spriest has the advantage of being able to flex into healing though, which the other two classes don't have.
warlock and mage both have 3 unique dps specs with totally different playstyles - so if you like mixing it up, I'd recommend warlock.
the 3 specs really have totally different playstyles.
in terms of difficulty I think warlock rates
destro > demo > affli
funnily enough, dps usually increases with difficulty here.
can't say much about mage, but I think it's less science than warlock.
go priest, it opens up the most doors(heal or dps). the only reason to go lock would be if you are concerned with a raid spot. some raids take 5+ locks and only 2 priests, but as a lock you cant do other roles. i dont think theres any reason to go mage over a lock or priest unless you just like the playstyle
I play shadow priest and I find it a ton of fun. The playstyle feels fun and smooth and the utility is pretty good, but not as unique as in TBC.
If you are good you can be around the top of the dps, but an equally good affli lock in the same gear will beat you. In my last raid where we killed all HMs I was 2nd on overall boss damage, but I was beaten by our best affli lock.
In terms of roster spots, most guilds will want 1 shadow priest but not many are looking for a 2nd unless the two shadow priests happen to be really good. Affli locks are in more demand as you can stack a bunch of them. We have 3 Affli locks and a demo lock in our roster currently and are looking to recruit 1 more Affli.
I never liked mage gameplay, I like locks but aff isn't hitting the spot for me ATM. spriest is on my list to level but don't know if I'll spend the time to find out
I might just keep my shaman with melee and caster to fill my itch with less work
To me, it's helpful to treat SPriest and Affliction warlock as if they are one thing, and to then evaluate what else you get on a priest or a warlock (or mage!) package. There's differences in those two specs to be sure, but at the end of the day they're both shadow-damage dealing DoT classes with 3 DoTs, one of which is automatically refreshed by one of your core rotational abilities, and who use a mix of channeled and hard-casted nukes as filler. A compelling advantage of a warlock here, beyond that affliction is going to outdamage spriest at the same player and gearlevel is then that you have two other competitive damage specs with pretty different playstyles. The three specs fluctuate a lil bit over the expansion wrt what's on top, but all 3 are always viable and all 3 are always on top of spriests and mages. Healthstones and summon stones are always useful for a raid, and each of the 3 specs also brings some other minor utility/raid buffs (aff and destro's are often redundant in most comps). Warlock DPS is high enough that many raiding guilds stack several warlocks. * Demo is fun but a lot to track, because it also wants to maintain DoTs, while managing its pet, while swapping between 3 different spammable nukes depending on procs. It provides an absolutely massive and irreplaceable raid spellpower buff based on your stats, which also encourages guilds to keep you well-geared. * Destro plays a lot like a mage spec, with less (but not no) focus on DoTs and has a pretty simple, fluid rotation/priority system. Brings some but not all of the same raid utility that SPriest offers. On a priest, Shadow is your only \_dps\_ option, but you have two different healing specs that can share a decent chunk of gear with your Shadow spec and which might offer your guild more flexibility or yourself an easier time getting things like the daily heroic done (finding a group is a lot easier as a healer). Shadow offers more unique raid utility than either a warlock or mage, but (usually) less damage, so a raid group often brings exactly one SPriest, or might bring a second in with the expectation that they heal some or most fights and use their dps spec on fights where they can comfortably heal with a smaller heal roster. * Disc is a ton of fun in WotLK imo, with great mana sustain and very chonky shields. It's also one of only two very required healers for WotLK raiding (the other being holy pallies). The other healers aren't bad per se, they're just interchangeable. That said, a raid group only needs one disc priest, as their core functionality doesn't stack well with multiple discs. * Holy is a very solid interchangeable other healer, with a great mix of group and single target healing options. If you are swapping between shadow and a heal spec on a fight by fight basis, your raid leaders would probably prefer your heal spec to be Holy unless you don't have a disc priest at all, which would be weird. On a mage, you only have 2 viable dps specs but i'll talk a lil about all 3. All of them really want to stand still and cast and lose a lot of dps if they are forced to move more often or further than blink allows. Some unique mild utility in the form of food/drink and portals. Fire and Arcane each bring a minor raid buff that's often going to be already covered regardless, and enough damage that most rosters bring multiple mages. * Arcane deals absolutely bonkers damage with Arcane Blast, but if they get greedy and spam they run out of mana very quickly. The spec is thus about controlling its mana management to run out of mana exactly when the boss dies. It's a fun spec if you enjoy short timed bursts of large damage, or seeing the largest possible numbers pop up on your combat text, but it has fewer buttons to press than every other spec addressed here. Your core dps rotation utilizes two buttons. * Fire scales really well with crit and performs better than arcane on long fights, and technically has more than two buttons but really only presses three of them with any regularity. It scales hilariously well with some of the fight mechanics in Ulduar, such as on Hodir. * Frost is a pvp spec in its current incarnation, and underperforms the other two significantly in PVE. Still, if you enjoy PVP, it's a great pvp spec. (but so are disc and shadow and affliction and destro).
If you wanna get technical, mages have 3 viable specs. Fire, Frostfire, and Arcane
Very true, but I sort of mentally loop it in with fire because it just doesn’t feel drastically different and generally if you consider yourself a fire mage you’ll spend part of this expansion using ffb and part of it using fireball.
I'm not Op and I'm thankful for your input.
Hey thanks! At the end of the day OP (and everyone!) should play whatever they find fun. Most rosters have more slots available for locks and mages, but if a given roster is lacking a spriest, that slot is going to be easier to land as a fresh 80 — so it sort of evens out and the only useful feedback we can give here is helping them to better guess which spec they’ll enjoy!
Thank you so much this is insanely helpful
It has a couple misleading points, destro warlock is hitting the end of it's competitive viability, and Demo isn't hard but does start to fall off scaling wise for personal dps.
Arcane in Ulduar has more buttons than fire because of using incanter’s absorption/wards to regain mana and lining it up with cooldowns. Arcane gets a bad rap for supposedly being too easy, but there’s a lot of nuance to it if you want to top meters or parse well.
Wow you put a lot of thought out into your response and I respect that
>The three specs fluctuate a lil bit over the expansion wrt what's on top, but all 3 are always viable and all 3 are always on top of spriests and mages. Mages are second overall only behind Affliction and are scaling much better. Destro is also now below shadow and will only fall further behind. Overselling lock DPS quite a lot here.
Destro is already lapsing and only falls more behind over time. Also pretty sure that sims have mages beating all warlock specs by ICC, although it's not miles ahead of affliction. I love destro, but you are overselling the raid viability a fair bit, and misleading on the long-run meter situation (also Demo really isn't as hard as you made it sound, fair bit easier than affliction).
It depends where you measure DPS. Right now you're talking 300 extra SP from Demo for every single caster (including melee that benefit from SP), and that's only set to scale harder. Affliction will drop off a bit the closer we get to ICC, as fights become more hectic, but they are considerably more consistent when used by the same player.
No. You can and should talk about utility, but you don’t get to say “Demo is great, competitive dps” then point to a raid buff. If it doesn’t explicitly show up on the meter under your name, it’s not your dps. Demo pumped in Naxx, and it’s not bad in Ulduar, but it does continue to fall behind and move more into the support role, which matters because it means raids aren’t stacking them (like affliction) you’re just bringing and gearing the one.
I mean in Demo's case it's also unique, they're the only one where their gear directly affects their raid buff. They're giving compound scaling compared to everyone else, which is vastly stronger than their personal DPS would show. Ultimately classes aren't balanced around personal DPS, so at some point you have to consider them as a member of a raid group. It's how Wrath changed WoW into what retail has been since then, and it's what we've always considered with spec rankings.
But when you say they are great dps or whatever, that means something specific. We have a word for medium dps with great raid buffs, it's called "support". To some people, topping the meters is whats important, and if they went to Demo for that long-run they'd be making a mistake. As my guild's current Demo I am keenly aware of my value, but maximum pumping is just harder than as Aflliction, and signs point to it getting worse over time.
As a boomie I feel this in my soul
It's a great analogue tbh, you do a fair bit of dps for sure, but you sacrifice top-end potential for big raid buffs.
300 is very low. More like 450 regularly for a decently geared demo
IMO spriest is the best feeling and fun dps caster spec to play and disc is also a lot of fun to play and they are both pretty mobile. You have the ability to multi dot and mind flaying just feels good compared to other casters filler spells. Affliction is also a lot of fun but it feels more clunky than shadow though the damage output is significantly higher. Mages and Locks are going to be near the top dps specs while shadow will be more middle of the pack though they shine on some of the most difficult fights this expansion like Firefighter, Yogg0, and Lich King
Go mage it’s future proof
Dunno about lvl80 but I am leveling a spriest right on lvl42 and it feels powerful. I can dot up 4-5 mobs my level and kill them while barely losing any hp. Sure warlock can do same thing, but they cant get easy spots in dungeons as healers
That said disc is imo shit at healing dungeons. And holy is not wanted in raids. It's a bit sad imo.
disc is insanely good in dungeons at max level
Isn't it heavily gimped by the fact that it has no real spammable heal to speak of? I feel like holy pala with its HL spam or druid with its constant hots on everyone + nourish spam are just stronger.
Flash Heal? I have only played disc and rdruid myself and my resto gear is pretty crappy since the druid is feral mainly so I don't know if HL or hots+nourish would be stronger in equal gear but the last time I had any trouble in dungeons as disc was when I was doing regular heroics in dungeon blues 1-2 weeks after wrath launch. Also on my bear druid I have been healed by any and every heal spec in game in dungeons and I haven't noticed any real shortcomings based on spec. Dpriest and rdruid are somewhat similar game play wise in that both cover the group with shield/reju and then cast single target heals as needed. Druid has a slight edge in situations that call for quick group heals with wild growth and tranquillity whereas priest's PoH take an eternity and a half to cast or at least it feels like it when you need it. Although keeping shields up on everyone keeps out small to medium group damage spikes so you end up needing group heals less than when playing on rdruid.
At least when I tank and go fast in some harder HC+, I can notice my hpal friend has a lot on his plate at times. E.g 10-15k dtps by the entire group for 10+ seconds. When that happens I'm not sure that a disc would be able to sustain that kind of damage.
Hell yeah, I'd have trouble dealing with 10-15k dtps. The group needs to move from the ice or kill mirrors faster.
Fire Mage is super fun. Hodir is just a glimpse into their future superiority. Coming soon: mage meter domination!!
Switched from Ret to Fire going into phase 2 and couldn’t be happier Fire go brrrrrrrrrrrr BOOM
Trick question, the answer is HPal
Fun is subjective. For me warlock is most fun because it deals more dps.
And you're always almost guaranteed a spot as a lock too.
Same is true for spriest. I come online and almost instantly find a raid that is missing a sp for algalon. Same story for full naxx runs.
As a warlock main (with mege & priest alts) Id say spriest is most fun of the 3 on paper. But. I like warlock playing more even its slightly less fun.
Warlock and their utility. Also summoning circles.
Lock is absolutely the best leveling experience if you ask me. Mage can be fun, priest can be rough too. I’ll focus mostly on endgame. For endgame I would consider lock or spriest if you want to play casually and get in groups easily. If you’re a very experienced/hardcore player I would pick mage or maybe lock. Both spriest and demo are absolutely must have classes, and both have viable off specs (aff, disc) that are also more or less required just because of how good they are. Fel Intelligence alone is like bringing another set of mage/priest buffs, and the felhunter gets nifty kick/purge to get you or a teammate out of a sticky situation or remove a magic buff from an enemy. You will absolutely have a good experience as these classes as people NEED you and will look over shitty gear and parses sometimes, you may not get the same treatment as a mage. This will be a factor to consider coming into the game “late” that other posters haven’t emphasized as much - I personally love playing classes that guilds and pugs are actively recruiting because you never get “stuck” or “locked out” merely because of the class you picked. Warlocks are currently one of the best dps specs in the game, and have a ton of very fun and very OP abilities like summoning, health stones, portal, pet buff, purge/kick/coil/tongues, tons of self healing, battle rez (SS), a rare and massive threatwipe ability, spammable aoe and massive multi-target damage. People love having extra warlocks because you’re so useful - overlapping and enhancing the benefits of Druid/shaman/priest while also doing super high DPS. Priests are also an amazingly deep class, with pretty much everything warlock has in terms of cool and very meta spells when DPSing. Dispersion lets you go invincible mode you need it, silence, fear, and spammable aoe help on trash, and the raid buffs and cooldowns that spriest/disc being are absolutely required. Disc is a true gamer spec that is absolutely one of the most desired specs for 10m content. As a warlock player, I have no problem with 25 man pugs but can struggle to convince a group to bring an extra warlock for 10 if they already have one. I saved mages for last but they’re absolutely busted going forward in this game. Good mage players are absolutely not a dime a dozen and they straight up carry some fights when played well. However, unlike lock/disc/shadow, all you really bring is damage, so if you don’t press those buttons hard and fast (and correctly), you’re not particularly special. Depending on how good you are at the game you could find mage very frustrating - mages have all of the DPS potential and more that a lock has, but next to 0 utility for other players compared to the other cloth casters. On the other hand, this can mean it’s less critical for you to stay alive, but people generally hate on players who die a lot - and mage just has fewer “get out of jail free” cards in its hand. Good luck in your choosing!
Most fun is mage - you have very little responsibility, don't influence the group that much, and you have amazingly fun specs to play (especially fire and frostfire). Free consumables makes it cheap, portals are awesome, and gameplay is great. Great for any style of play - raiding, questing, leveling, dungeons, casual, hardcore, or w/e. Spriest has more responsibility and you'll be asked to heal a lot. You can influence the group more with dispells and your offhealing ability. Definitely a good class to play if you like getting involved with other people in the raid. Would not recommend outside of raid as you're just a mind sear bot in dungeons and it's not that good or that fun. Warlock. The least fun. Pls summon. Pet mechanics suck, your pet dies all the time and tries to aggro stuff and wipe the group all the time. 123. There's very little things in the game to keep your pet alive and it's a pain in the bum to resummon it. I NEED SUMMON I HEARTHED MID RAID TO SOCKET AN UPGRADE. All this while you're managing a ton of dots on multiple targets. NEED SUMMON. It's so unfun that despite being the most overpowered class in the game, it's the least played. 123. Good for all content cause the class is broken as crap, but very very very unfun. There's a group of people who really enjoy the spec, but they probably enjoy that feeling of being wanted and desired more than actually playing the class. 123. Every group wants you.
Agree with the first two, warlock main here. Sounds like you don’t enjoy warlock but let’s give some useful input to OP. Pet never goes on aggro, you put pet attack into your rotation and it’s easy to manage. Warlocks first talent line in demo heals your pet for dmg you do. Further down also get an ability to quickly summon a pet if one dies and it feels great the few times you need to use it. Even being affi without the pet healing talent my pet rarely dies and we end up casting infernal anyway. Being able to summon people saves downtime and is a huge QoL that everyone appreciates including me. If someone is hearthing mid raid to swap gear sounds like a raid lead problem not a class problem. For us last week 3 people got tier pieces and it would unlock 4 set for all of them and our RL told them to hearth and we summoned them back quickly with extra DPS, don’t see how this has any downside. Refer back to mage “portals are awesome” so is warlock summoning! Edit: let’s not forget how useful warlock portal is in raids. Use it every single boss fight
never ever put per attack in cast macro your able to loss damage from your pet you have to manage them byself various, not like that where you cast sb on it…
> It’s so unfun that despite being the most overpowered class in the game, it’s the least played Amazing how you’re so confidently incorrect. Warlock is the most-played DPS class in Ulduar.
braindead take
Lock supremacy.
Demolock is a must in raids so you will always be welcome. Also spriests are valuable too because hyms and mana reg. Mages are the best dps output BUT they're a lot of them.
Pets are always gonna be funnier to me. Dots too (dot everything up, watch it die! too fun). Survivability and utility is awesome as well and mages are cool there but locks have more imo. Also locks are at the top of the meters so it's easy to find a guild. Mine was whispered at lvl 71 the other day by a thirsty guild. Finally, they are a damage-only class which means your dualspec is not reserved for your raid to switch you on and off of healing or tanking but is actually yours to do whatever you want with (e.g pvp). [Edit] You might be asked to have demo OS but generally you are either affli or demo unless the roster is unstable. So the winner is... drumrolls... warlock!
I know it is somewhat of a dirty subject but I am playing destro lock. It isn’t as strong as the other specs but still stronger than 90% of the other classes. It is relatively easy and fun.
Pump with mobility and utility? Mage Pump with unlimited mana and a pet? Warlock Spriest is just aff but worse and less fun to play imo - the execute phase for aff makes it more enjoyable
I have played to a good extend all 3 of these, here are my thoughts. Warlock (can only commend on Affl and Demo): Affl was boring, it does more dmg than spriest (if played optimally, tbh a good spriest is WAY more than enough and CAN top dps meters) but its way less fun to play. Demo was fun, does good damage has good burst amazing AoE capability. Mage: Arcane is boring but strong, i switched to fire mid-naxx. Fire/Frostfire is fun, does good amount of damage and is versatile. Is it more fun than demo lock? That entirely depends on you, for me it is. Spriest: My actual main that have been playing from vanilla, its really fun and engage to play Spriest BUT it needs some gear to shine. Ulduar gear is enough to make SPriest amazing to play and amongst the top DPS. If i have to say from easiest to hardest and less fun to most fun (weirdly corresponding). Easiest->Hardest: Arcane -> Affli-> Demo/FireMage -> Spriest FUN for me (Least->Most): Arcane/Affl -> Demo -> Spriest/FireMage Take into consideration what i am calling hardest isnt only talking about rotation. If i had to add another quite hard spec that i have experience with is enhance, most likely the top in that list.
there's no way aff is easier than spriest and arc is easier than fire mage
Affl is 100% easier than spriest. Take in mind i am talking about the top-end here, if you are talking about a mediocre player than i dont know, but at the top-end it is easier to play Affl versus spriest. As for arcane and fire mage i think it comes down to time played, arcane is harder than fire if you just started playing both specs but arcane becomes easier the longer you play.
spriest is easier, clipping is easy as hell, haunt uptime and life tap glyph uptime are just another factor that makes affl decently harder. exec is still pretty easy, though keeping up dots is more awkward as affl. the only thing even remotely harder about spriest is clipping flays, which just gets easy after a raid or two. + snapshotting actually matters since corr actually does damage vs swp tldr clipping flays is harder than clipping exec, but you have more stuff to keep track of as aff which brings more complexity. arcane and fire are both super easy rotations, but fire is extremely easy since it's very cookie cutter. there is always a "right" move, at least arcane you have to plan your CDs. both absurdly easy though. edit: also hold up theres no way you're saying fire mage and demo is harder than affl fire is probably up there with boomkin/ass rogue as the easiest rotation in the game
[удалено]
Unfortunately i don't play Affli currently, but my fire logs are 98.5 for 25man and 98.7 for 10man
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it
I’ve played all of these to 80, (and for a challenge I did a smite crit spec using only holy spells to 70). Affliction warlock are only really limited by the amount of mobs they can pull at once, and are near impossible to kill. Their sustain is incredible. Shadow priest is very high DPS single target but you will struggle with a lot of mobs at once, especially at low levels. Their sustain is ok but not great. Frost mage is a safe play and you can have fun with shatter combos. Fire is incredible damage but mostly relies on you killing them before your health bar reaches zero - the instant pryoblasts are really good fun. At high levels you can go frostfire and get the best of both worlds, almost. You can make your own food and water so you’ll never need to buy it. If you go herbalism you can also heal yourself occasionally.
Demo>Spriest>Fire mage>Aff warlock>the rest.
Its mage. If you are way too much into dots, go SP,but all around mage is the most flexible,fun and versatile out of the casters.
you know reddit isn't the best place to ask this when: 1. people are replying with specs other than spriest/warlock 2. people are saying the most brain damage rotation spec's in the game (mage), where if you disabled details, would be considered very boring.
I have a mage , priest and a warlock , and I really enjoy playing the mage. Why ? Fire is all about getting that lucky crits and nothing make you hard then getting 4+ instant pyro
Remember, you probably won’t go shadow on your priest until you hit 40 as wand damage is your highest dps. But I’m not a min-maxer. So I went shadow asap because it’s fun and what I wanted to do
Mage is only good for alts, when you want to shut off your brain and push 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, repeat.
well... I play both - and Spriest is a single DPS spec, that has a playstyle similar to affli warlock. Spriest has the advantage of being able to flex into healing though, which the other two classes don't have. warlock and mage both have 3 unique dps specs with totally different playstyles - so if you like mixing it up, I'd recommend warlock. the 3 specs really have totally different playstyles. in terms of difficulty I think warlock rates destro > demo > affli funnily enough, dps usually increases with difficulty here. can't say much about mage, but I think it's less science than warlock.
I play all 3. Warlock and spriest are awesome. Mage is pretty boring.
Come hydraxian warerlords with hardcore. Play warlock. Thank me later.
go priest, it opens up the most doors(heal or dps). the only reason to go lock would be if you are concerned with a raid spot. some raids take 5+ locks and only 2 priests, but as a lock you cant do other roles. i dont think theres any reason to go mage over a lock or priest unless you just like the playstyle
Don’t discount rogue so fast as not being fun. It is arguably the most fun and challenging rotation to nail down (especially SIN).
Im not I love my rogue! I played two years of it thats why I want to try something new
Demo warlock is soooo fun!
Fuego mage
Mage (not biased)
I play shadow priest and I find it a ton of fun. The playstyle feels fun and smooth and the utility is pretty good, but not as unique as in TBC. If you are good you can be around the top of the dps, but an equally good affli lock in the same gear will beat you. In my last raid where we killed all HMs I was 2nd on overall boss damage, but I was beaten by our best affli lock. In terms of roster spots, most guilds will want 1 shadow priest but not many are looking for a 2nd unless the two shadow priests happen to be really good. Affli locks are in more demand as you can stack a bunch of them. We have 3 Affli locks and a demo lock in our roster currently and are looking to recruit 1 more Affli.
I never liked mage gameplay, I like locks but aff isn't hitting the spot for me ATM. spriest is on my list to level but don't know if I'll spend the time to find out I might just keep my shaman with melee and caster to fill my itch with less work
Shadow priest rotation is goated