Wizards and Warlocks

[Mirama]

<DIV>Hello, I'm fairly new to the game, I've gotten 3 characters up to level 23 ( Fury, monk and ranger ), and I'm still searching for what I want to play, something that drives me. My roomate is an assassin and we've always been competitive so I started playing a ranger so we could see who could do more DPS, well I did not like how my ranger played so I started looking at other DPS classes then I saw the soerceres.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I looked at Wizard and Warlock and was decideing which one I would like better, I decided to roll with a Warlock since there arent as many and the idea of it sounds preety cool to me but then I started reading on how much Warlocks need to be re-vamped and that they don't even have a class hat yet but Wizards are still preety good so...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I guess my question would be, how big is the gap between Wizard and Warlock while going up through the levels and end-game raiding? I just want to know if continueing my Warlock, I will be able to keep up with my roomates assassin or not. ( with the best stuff I can obtain ) or if the Warlock class is just too broken and I should re-roll a Wizard. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>and Also, I've heard that pet classes sometimes out dps the supposidly T1 dps mages ( soerceres ) .. is this true?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Thanks guys! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV>

[Soefje]

<P>My son plays an assassin.  On single mobs, he will toast me, not even close.  On groups, I can out DPS him.  My nephew is a wizard and same thing.</P> <P>When I am playing my SK and putting together a group, I would choose an assassin over a warlock any day.  They have great utility, aggro transfer buffs, and do great damage.  Also, if they happen to pull aggro, they have enough mit to stay alive longer.  Depending upon where I am, I would choice wizard as my second choice.  I like their single target spells, easier for me to hold aggro.  I have to work a lot harder and smarter with a warlock, and will eventually lose aggro on multiple mobs.  The AOE taunts are just not that good.</P> <P>My advice, choose a tank and group together, you can do a lot with a duo.  SK and assassin make great duos, they can crank out the DPS.  My son and I can take almost any ^^ and many ^^^ mobs and never slow down.   When my nephew joins or if we find a healer, then we are almost unstoppable.</P>

[Araxes]

<div></div>Warlocks do have a class hat.  It's the same as the wizard and conjuror class hat and the assumption is that eventually we will get a unique one.Warlocks are very situational as far as our role in a group and our DPS can vary wildly from one situation to the next.  For example : - During a 6-man heroic instance run 9 times out of 10 I am at the top of the parse by a giant margin.  Why?  The mobs tend to be grouped in two's or three's or more and they die quickly which means my spells have maximum impact.  So in this type of situation warlocks are highly sought after.  We also have a number of high level proc spells that can proc off the tank and scout weapons to do additional poison damage.  I have grouped many times solely for that reason as much as for my damage.However ...- During raids our spell set is generally too volatile to be of practical use.  Many tanks are not suited to handle the massive amount of hate we generate.  Say that they pull a linked group of 3 epic mobs.  They target one mob.  The assist gives his macro and the raid kicks in to take that one mob down.  The warlock has two choices : he can risk off-targeting and thereby dealing the maximum amount of damage to all 3 mobs by using his target-encounter spells ... or he can sit pretty and cast his single-target spells.  In the former case he's only going to accomplish two things : [Removed for Content] off the raid and dying.  In the latter case he's going to come in somewhere on the middle of the DPS charts (unless he has the fortune to be placed in a group with a paladin or guardian using master versions of Moderate / Amends and a troubador is also present and they are both buffing him specifically) and feel generally useless.I'm not going to discuss solo play bc I think that's completely subjective to the player's own tactics and methods.We are getting a new de-aggro with the upcoming expansion (actually it's a change to an existing one) which will give us a long-needed encounter-wide de-aggro spell which should help significantly.  Only time will tell if it will alleviate some of our raiding issues ...And please keep in mind ... there are warlocks who will state things are different on both sides of the fence.  I'm not here to say "We are this and we are not that" bc inevitably it's going to be different for everyone and some people have very positive experiences and some people have very negative ones ... I don't really care whether they can do more or less DPS in any given situation than any other warlock or class ... I'm merely giving you my honest observations here from what I have experienced.The bottom line is that we have such wild variations in our output that it makes it hard to definitively say "Yes we can X amount of damage X amount of the time."<div></div><p>Message Edited by Vicontessa on <span class=date_text>11-08-2006</span> <span class=time_text>08:39 AM</span>