lock population

[timebomb]

how do you think the lock population is now?

well.. with BC not coming out for a few more months im thinking of jumping on the most powerful class in the game right now and by the looks of thing will be gods in BC.

what i dont get is why there is not more of them. i know my guild is short on locks. are they played out? are people sick of being overpowered and need a chalenge? or is it just a pain in the ash to farm all the shards? or maybe there is a neff bat coming? talk to me. fill me in.

[Gealach]

Warlocks don't really start getting overpowered (in PvE) until level 30 or so when drain-tanking becomes viable. Its the low levels that weed folks out.

THat said, I expect a lot of new Blood Elf characters will be warlocks.

[kreyson]

Because we are at heart a medium rate DPS class for PVE raids. Hunters, Rogues and Mages can easily out DPS us in raids. Soloing wise, i find them to be awesome, really get going in the mid 20's. Major downside, is that we are very heavily slaves to our mana. Run out of mana, and we have down time.

Personally, i found warlocks to be the most fun to level up:) Totally diabolically evil.

[Steamboat]

It's probably the shards, the fact that we aren't as OP as people make us out to be, and that we have a high learning curve. Locks are complicated.

If you roll a warlock thinking you'll just run around and wtfpwn people just because you're a warlock, you'll get frustrated and quit. It seems most people who think warlocks are overpowered seem to believe that every warlock is specced 31/31/31. We're not.

It seems most people think we have all our pets out at once. We don't. If we have the right pet, we have a good chance at winning. If we have the wrong pet, we have a good chance at losing. You'll find out that warlocks are ridiculously situational, and you'll quit.

You think you'll spam Death Coil as an IWIN button, then you find out you don't get it til level 40, it has a 2 minute cooldown, and it's not an IWIN button. Then you'll quit.

You think you'll just fear people all day, then you find out there are a million ways for people to break fear, sometimes it gets resisted, sometimes it breaks early, and diminishing returns sucks. Then you'll quit.

You think you can just put on soul link and be unkillable, until you realize that in many situations it just means it takes longer for you to die. You also have low DPS and find yourself gimped in PVE. Not to mention the fact that healing your pet a bunch increases your downtime. Then you'll quit.

You might spec destruction and feel the awesome burst DPS power of being a 40 second wonder. And on top of that you'll blow shards just as fast as mana. You'll love the 50% of the time you spend killing. But the other 50% you spend farming shards or drinking will make you want to quit.

Or you might actually learn the subtle nuance required to master the best class in the game and stay. But not many do.

[timebomb]

sounds like getting to level 40 will weed out the most locks and the ones that are left know how to play a lock. i tell i fight locks just because they are the hardest class for me to beat. i probably fight more locks than any other class and i still lose to them the most. it is dam hard to beat a lock them and ms warriors lol.

maybe i should try a lock and see if i can get past 40. it seems that you dont realy need gear to pvp with a lock. is this true?

[Hrungnir]

You need gear to pvp well with any class. Warlocks scale less with gear than a warrior or a rogue will.

But, at the same time, I've found that warlocks are more forgiving of gear imbalances. If you can keep the warrior with the fancy sword from ever hitting you, it doesn't matter how awesome it is.

Just make sure you roll horde so you don't have to fight undead all the time.

[Metatron]

Well I have pvp'd wearing nothing but a Tuxedo and carrying the offhand book from UBRS in my hand screaming 'The accountants from the other side have come for your souls... um... tax returns!' Wasn't as effective as you would like to believe, so yes, warlocks do need gear to win fights.

[MoRRoW]

Because we are at heart a medium rate DPS class for PVE raids. Hunters, Rogues and Mages can easily out DPS us in raids. Soloing wise, i find them to be awesome, really get going in the mid 20's. Major downside, is that we are very heavily slaves to our mana. Run out of mana, and we have down time.

Personally, i found warlocks to be the most fun to level up:) Totally diabolically evil.

Medium rate DPS class?
Downtime?
These word sounds weird to my ears...

DPS : Sure Mages and some other classes can outdps us in a raid. BUT, 10% of mages DPS comes from OUR curses if not more because of the reduction of spell resist to fire and frost. And DPS is not the only thing important in a raid.

Shards are not THAT much of a pain when you're in a raid as there is more than enough trash mobs to fill up your bags with shards.

and Downtime?? What is that, I never heard of that with my lock. Locks are the BEST mana user class at having no downtime. There is so many way to get your health back up compared to having your mana back up that if you have downtime with a lock, then you're doing something wrong.

I leveled my lock to 60 pretty much being all destruction and I didn't experience 1/3 the downtime I have with my mage (which is why he's still sitting at 42... my lock was lvl 21 when my mage was 36...) but the downtime with the mage just killed me.

Ways to get your health back for a lock :
-life drain
-Syphon life (affl. build)
-Healthstone
-Bandage
-Bread/food (bough from vendor or giving by a friendly mage;) )
-Health pot

Ways to get health back for a hunter/mage:
-Bread/food
-Bandage
-Healing pot

Ways to get your mana back for locks :
-LIFE TAP (which you actually use to even out hp/mp so you can eat/drink at same time instead of just drinking (so that means downtime is reduce by half if for example you'd be a mage with 100% hp and 0 mana)
-Drain mana
-Dark pact (affliction build)
-Imp. drain soul (aff build)
-Pot
-water
-other consumables like morning dew (I always say mountain dew so the name might be wrong ;) )

I agree with you that locks are a lot of fun to level and play with.

The reasons I see people not playing locks are probably more related to their aoe limitation compared to mages, the fact that we have a ''pet'' and probably because of misconception that locks are a hard class to play. I know some people don't play locks just because they don't want to be bothered with a pet so they chose a mage for example.

Warlocks are not that hard to play even for beginners. It's not worse then having to stance dance as a warrior and properly tank. It's not worse than aoeing properly or pulling totems out at the right time.

[Oatmealsmurf]

Agreed. If we wanted to have a DPS pissing contest with mages we could hold our own. The reason we don't finish on top of damage meters is no threat reduction. Rogues have vanish, feint. Hunters have Feign Death. And mages have a base threat reduction built into the frost and fire trees.

Now if we didn't have to worry about our threat level and refused to put up curse of elements or curse of recklessness for the overall benefit of the raid... we could very much compete with mages and rogues in dps. And I usually finish above our Hunters in our raids, even in MC where I'm one of the primary banisher's on lava packs and have to basically sit out the Garr fight completely.

And I completely agree regarding mana... I'm leveling a mage right now (lvl 47) and the down time is way more than on my lock from fight to fight. The only thing that helps compensate is being able to AOE grind like nobody's business. We may not have the most mana efficient spells... but the ability to life tap and life drain gives us the most efficient and largeset effective mana pool of the casting classes. Down time are two words that should be foreign to a lock.

[lonewolfe]

I'm still learning my Lock ( 29 ) and I agree with what you guys say.

I just finished a VC run with a 32 Pally and a 22 Priest and they were shocked we did it with three men. I really dont think they knew that I was using curse of recklessness on all the mobs so as to avoid a wipe. Did the Pally understand what was happening as the Mob was running away in fear and then it magically came back to him to be killed ? I doubt it.

Same again at Stockades. We cleared it with three Hunters ( only one over 30 ) and myself.

I just dont think everyone knows exactly what a Lock can do and it leaves us somewhat under appreciated at times. I really enjoy my Lock and I am so glad I tried the class.

My take on why so many quit - They see the Succubus and say "I want that ". Then when they get Her the novelty dies out around level 25 and they quit. Just a few levels shy of when the Lock becomes really powerful. :tongue:

[Gealach]

Althought lock's will be able to spec for very good threat reduction in BC.

[bwirum]

Locks are not for all people. It can be the most destructive and fierce competition you'll ever see or it can be a walk in the park to run over. It all comes down to whether the guy/gal behind the keys actually enjoy and know how to play a lock. Locks are arguably the most complex class in the game and that in itself weeds out most people. Me included. I have an UD lock. He's lvl 21. He's been lvl 21 for months. I think he'll stay 21. I like my priest the most right now :smile:

[nosoup4crr]

I just rerolled on one of the new servers, Dorrowmere. Somewhere between 30-40% of the undead population are warlocks. I think there has been a change--it's just less easily seen in older servers. I rerolled a priest, as i believe their solo ability was enhanced AND their importance to raiding remains entact. The sad part is, there is a HUGE shortage of priests on the server. I can't go 4 or 5 minutes without being whispered to join for SM Cath or RFD. It's rediculous really.

While I think warlocks got the best improvements so far in BC, I think it's a bit premature to call them "gods." Blizzard isn't stupid. There's a reason that EVERY class continues to be played. If they did gain an inequitable advantage, I'm sure it's not so substantial as to unbalance the game.

I've rolled and played a warlock up to level 32--not long enough to hit any of the talents which the class is sometimes built around. But even without those, I see how powerful the class can be. In my opinion, the power comes from versatility.

I would agree that locks rival (albeit don't surpass) mages in DPS--if spec'ed and played correctly. And yes, in addition, they have fear, and a pet. And they have little downtime (although I would say Shadow Priests may surpass them in that aspect). However, their AoE abilities aren't as strong, mages still have sheep, and they can shield themselves efficiently while using movement hindering effects. I don't think either class has a remarkable advantage over the other--for that matter, I don't believe ANY class to be decisively "better" than another. It's a great game. I think it's time some people stop focussing on how it's not perfect.