Hello Friends, I want to play a wizzard or Warlock soon. From the view of a Roleplayer I like the warlock most. Im not looking for huge numbers on parsers, but I want a spellcaster with damage. If Im looking in Spelllists for Wizzards I see lots of funny gadgets: Evac, Circle of fire, Teleport, this funny Iceshield and some strong PBAEs (or open AEs). If Im looking in Warlock Spelllists, I see lots of Damage, somd usefull Buffs but not so much extra gadgets. Do I miss something? What makes the Warlock as funny as the wizzard? Please don´t say: Go, play a wizzard! I realy like the Warlock idea, but I feel like missing something. The option of Teleporting alone let me feel like warlocks have to get something in exchange. Thanks alot!
It always felt like the warlock had more utility. They can mana tap, power feed, have great buffs and are have sexxy all over em. Wizards can evac and pull aggro on solos from what I can see. They can spike the dps chart with their manaburn every few fights. Warlock dps is more consistent imo. If I had it to do all over again I would still play a warlock.
I will offer a little advice on the subject of warlocks, mainly because I was looking for more information myself, and I currently have a lvl 23 Warlock. Warlocks, from what I have seen focus more on group damage, DoTs, and disease & poison. We have a significant number of group aes(green). We do have some utility spells, but i can't think of any off the top of my head, and can't check since I'm at work :-(. My warlock is my 3rd alt I've made, and as much as I am enjoying playing him, he may soon move up the ranks past my Assassin & Defiler.
From time to time in the past it has been tough, but I would never go to Wizzie. I love my Warlock. There aren't all that many of us, and we get the job done JUST fine. We have a few aggro issues to deal with, but I don't mind that normally. I don't WANT to be on autopilot, and I SHOULD get pounded if I go all out and spike group DPS too high. Overall, I find that we bring the pain quite nicely, and I LOVE playing my Warlock even on a bad raid or a tough group night. And that is really all I could ask for.
My problems so far: [ul][li]Rangers and Assassins that can do 900dps just on autoattack. Thats not counting poisons, CA's, or anything else. They almost never have power problems either. [/li][li]Their hate transfer/decrease is MUCH higher than ours. [/li][li]MANY classes have effective buffs for melee (haste/dps). We only really have troubs/dirges/illy's aside from one-off spells from other classes that can't be cast across the raid. Any non-casdter dps class can get a variety of different buffs from various classes to make up for someone missing. If we are missing a bard, we're going to be MUCH less effective.[/li][/ul]So that being said its not really a warlock problem but a caster problem in general, or more specifically, sorcerer. However, we don't have a manaburn/lifeburn to fall back to, so a slacking wizard can stay high on the parse just by manaburning whenever they can. When we pay attention and be the most effective we can, we'll shine, but it takes more skill than other dps casters. Illusionists have also become DPS machines too, but they probably take more work than we do. agressiv
Agaxax@Unrest wrote: we are T1 dps too, yet we cant just click a button and do 900 damage we cant mash buttons without losing power we cant survive if we pull aggro yet predators can! where is the fairness there?
Agaxax@Unrest wrote: I just want to correct this. Rangers do most of their damage on auto attack, they use CA's inbetween because of the delay of their bows Assassins, do very little damage on auto attack, most of their damage comes from CA's. Because of this Assassins do have power issues. manaburn is over rated look at the parse manaburn is a huge number but still they are outdown my other classes or can be overall.
miliskel wrote: well I don't this this is to accurate either. no other class in EQ2 has to work harder for dps then assasssin's. Since auto attack damage is low, and since most of their damage comes from behind and in stealth, it takes allot of work and skill to get dps. and allot of spaming the ca's in the right order. In full AE damage range, I might add. I recently was playing around with a caster and was chuckling how easy they are to play. although predators can take a hit better, not in a raid, they are one or two shotted as well., though they do have better argo management tools, which makes up for the position requirements, which are frankly a big pain and huge disadvantage.
If you are looking for fun "gadgets", ie utility in this case, dont choose warlock. The manatap/powerfeed mentioned earlier is so **** it hardly qualifies as utility. Warlocks do get single and group port to gfay, cl and ant. And we can invis one player at a time for a limited amount of time. Some would say root is utility. We get one single target root and one encounter root. I think we have more debuffs than wiz. Oh! we have an aoe deaggro that teleports the mobs (or players if you duel) and slows them. That can be fun..
Ruut Li wrote: I know I'm resurrecting this thread from the grave, but I've been trying to find anywhere indicating Locks get to teleport like Wizzies. Finally in Ruut's post I have my answer. But theres also a question I have. Can locks only port to Gfay, commonlands, and antonica?? My druid was able to port to CL, Gfay, Ant,Steamfont, and BB at level 24. So locks and wizzies can only port to half the places that druids can port to?
they can teleport to Teren's grasp but yeah sorcerers get more limited teleports but on the plus side we can teleport others with out them having to have already had to hoof it to the place first like druids do.
My main is a level 72 warlock, and I know someone who plays a wizard in his 50's, so I know a bit about both. I also will never betray my warlock for the world. The warlock counterpart for Iceshield is Aura of Nihility, which procs damage with three consecutive spells, which is indispensible for soloing and grouping. Nulmail, reached at level 40, trumps the wizard counterpart, Frost Mail, as Nulmail gives the warlock a 50% chance to dodge all attacks with a huge increase in mitigation, as opposed to a straight up ward. In fact, if you play your warlock tree right, they can have a much greater survivability than wizards (yeah yeah yeah evac, this just proves that wizzerds need to run away to avoid death). Enhance: Magi's Shielding can give a ward upwards of 600-700 damage at level 72 (You know, now with 70 AA points, every warlock can do this now, not cool for those who want to play the soloing/survival game). The Hastenings Line can drop the cast time and reuse time for about every single-target spell you have. Propogations can increase the chances of the warlock's procs, which can turn the warlock into a DPS'ing machine. Yeah we don't have a Manaburn or an Ice Comet or any of those mega-damage abilities, but we play our role perfectly: We combine our direct damage with DoT's and procs to make our opponent decay from the inside. Then again, I'm not exactly sure whether the wizard can also do these things. I never really checked. They better not make them superior to the 'locks in everything. Well, at least we have the element of being the rarer Sorceror.
"well I don't this this is to accurate either. no other class in EQ2 has to work harder for dps then assasssin's. Since auto attack damage is low, and since most of their damage comes from behind and in stealth, it takes allot of work and skill to get dps. and allot of spaming the ca's in the right order. In full AE damage range, I might add. I recently was playing around with a caster and was chuckling how easy they are to play. although predators can take a hit better, not in a raid, they are one or two shotted as well., though they do have better argo management tools, which makes up for the position requirements, which are frankly a big pain and huge disadvantage." I have to disagree 100%. Preds and Scouts have an easier time dpsing than Sorcs in my opinion, the process of pressing buttons is more complex than a Sorc, but thats it. It is busy work. A Ranger can stand back and plink arrows, no real cast time, no huge mana consuption, and do equal or more dps than a Sorc, and NEVER get aggro. The other day I was in Unrest with a level 79 Zerker as a tank (I'm level 72, Im taking my time in RoK), I could NOT go full out dps on the linked mobs, I was pulling aggro off of him EVERY time I did. Single target dps I only pulled aggro on the bosses like Garanel, where I had time to get a full dps cycle going, but encounters where happening every time. Even if I stopped dps completely and spammed both green aggros and even the Fae racial deaggro, about 2/3 times I STILL had aggro and the SK had to FD me. The level 80 Ranger in the group was doing absolutely insane dps, regularly hitting for 3000+ dmg mixed in with tons of little spam for 500-900 dmg (this is just the dmg I noticed), far faster than my dps, and he never pulled aggro once, and he was standing in one spot far away from the mob just like me. He did better dmg than I did on the encounters because he COULD without getting aggro. Of course one could say thats typical in Unrest, as the Zerk cant use his AoEs to hold multi aggro off me cause of aggro through the walls, or you can say he sucked. But the only tanks I can't pull aggro from are well played Paladins when I have amends, amends plus their own aoe dps = solid aggro lock. Anyhow... Standing behind the mob and using macros and other setups to backstab, stealth, backstab, stun, backstab, backstab etc etc, is busy work, it requires no skill. I hate it when people pat themselves on the back, nothing in this game requires skill, least of all standing behind an enemy that is being tanked and pressing the buttons to unload amazing dps with 0 risk of getting aggro. Sorcs can do it from far away, and don't have to worry about aoes/positioning. Instead, they have to worry about aggro, AoEs and positioning don't get you killed as often as horrible aggro transfers and control, it also artificially limits Sorc dps. It is a very real thing to be out damaged by a Pred and YOU are the one who pulls aggro, then once you have it you can't lose it; because the deaggros we have are HORRIBLE. You get uot dpsed not because you suck, or your tank sucks, or even that Preds are better. I KNOW Sorcs can smear PReds and Scouts on the parse, but usually, you HAVE to be really conservative with your casting or you WILL pull aggro and you WILL die, I've never seen a well played Scout/PRed pull aggro, ever. Assassins get a 13% aggro transfer for free afaik. Sorcs have to spec down a crappy AA line and invest 6-7 AA's to get an aggro reduction of equal value, not a transfer. And the INT line ***** your dps by spending points there and not elsewhere. So it depends, no one is really any harder than the others. Preds and Scouts have to do more busy work to get their dps, but they don't have to worry about aggro. And death to AoE's should only matter in raids, but you're likely to have a Shaman or Bard giving you AoE protection, or the AoEs are frontal and you are behind. Death to AoEs does happen, but it is not on the same level as issues Sorcs have with getting and then losing aggro. Sorcs don't have to move around as much this is true, but positioning is not difficult, as long as your tank isn't an idiot and aggro isn't ping ponging, it's just busywork. I have a level 65 Brigand and play all the time with a 70 Assassin buddy, I've raided Labs with him so far and run alot of instances, it really is not hard. Is it more "work" than a sorc, yes, but not harder. It's like one guy being told he has to hold a 10lb weight and walk around for an hour, compared to the other guy being told he has to hold a 30lb weight over his head for an hour, but he gets to stand in one spot. The guy with the 10b has to do MORe, but MORE does not = harder, and the guy with the 30lb weight has more issues if he drops it... Anyways /rant off. I'm just sick of Scouts and Preds acting like they are oh so difficult and Sorcs are easymode.
These days I actually think its rather the opposite. Wizards are betraying to warlock. Having watched both wizard and warlock threads, I think warlocks are actually a bit happier than wizards. Both are high dps casting classes, forced into some utility roles they dont want, and both grit their teeth when melee classes out dps them and they get rejected for a dps role because their dps is insufficient. Even though linked mobs have been diminished, there are still linked mobs throughout norrath and warlock still is supreme there. And since any group or raid can pick up a melee dps for singles, being able to hire the best ae dps in warlock is a huge plus for the class. BTW I dont know about higher level necro, but conjurer also has very good ae dps, so guess there is some competition there. I have both wiz and warlock mid 40s and still havent decided which I prefer. I think warlock is stronger and has better aa trees. Wizard seems a bit more secure for single mob soloing. And I have no idea how either class works out for lv 80 raiding.
This is kinda derailing the topic, but I would argue that it is much more difficult to play melee classes than mages. For mages, you can just plant yourself within range and execute the best spell casting order you know for the situation. But melee classes have to joust AEs, time autoattacks, and get positionals. And just like mages, they need a CA order just like we need a casting order. Right now warlocks have got some serious loving in the game. We're almost as good at single target as wizzes, and we still blow everyone out of the water on AE fights. I think its messed up that we dps better than preds, because they don't have the utility us sorcerers do. Melee proc buff, self hp buff, self ward, self save, 4% aggro transfer, AE damage shield, props, group noxious buff, group casting skills buff, mana transfer...and preds get, um, well Assassins get 16% aggro transfer and Rangers get hook arrow. Of course they got chain and we get cloth, so I have less pity on them for that =P
Soloing is easyer by a wizard. With stronger single target nukes. And a better root. Grouping a wizard will do more dps. Raiding Warlock will out dps the wizard.
I leveled to 70 as a Wizzy then betrayed to the lock and never looked back. Wizards can kick butt with DPS on single encounters they have some nice big nukes and mana burn, however I felt they where one dimentinal after I had played a warlock for over a month. I would never go back. In the right group on the right encounter warlocks can dps like no other class, its fun waiting for the parse to go up and the raid just stares at the numbers in disbelief. That alone is priceless. But there is more, we have some utility with the aa Line propagation which adds actually DPS to your group via increasing proc damage. We have some buffs to melee types and a few fun spells change people into bats rats and frogs. Upheaval or rift is one of best spells yet with a AOE knock up its fun to cast both in PVE and PVP. It's the closest thing to blowing things up in this game. It takes more skill to DPS well and top the parse than a wizard, we have more agro issues then any other class. We need more support classes to perform , and paladins are you friend. Positioning for a scout and assassin can be harder on raids if the target is bouncing around or the MT keeps moving the encounter. Which can reduce there DPS, however they don't have to rely on other classes to manage there agro and don't get one shotted as much. You truly wont understand why a warlock is more fun that a wizard unless you play one. If you want to have fun on the tank in your group start porting the mobs, gives them heart attacks and a good laugh.
