When I think about what I want to be in classic (I’m starting late), it’s definitely a female gnome warlock: I love the idea of being alliance, and yet a “dark mage”, I love female gnomes, having escape artist in pvp, having paladins on my side, not having all my dots constantly dispelled by them, I love the faction and so on…
On the other side, I gotta deal with wotf, not having stun resist, being purged and earth shocked by shamans all the time.
I really want to be alliance as a warlock, but I think I’m going to regret it once all these undeads, all these purges/dispells on my void sac, and all the wf totem and wf procs, start to appear.
I like alliance, but if my experience as a lock is going to be significantly worse in pvp, I’d rather not do it.
You should play a gnome warlock. Most people suck at this game; especially the Horde players. That’s why they rolled Horde in the first place. They need the OP racials to carry them. Good news is, that they don’t know how to utilize them properly. So you’ll be fine.
I haven’t played warlock much, but here’s my take on it:
Not having to deal with paladins is a huge deal in mass pvp and battlegrounds.
Having escape artist will help you against classes that counter you the most, while WotF helps against classes you can get advantage over in other ways.
Being prepared will in most cases overcome the disadvantage of being on the alliance side. You can get the BS trinket to be immune to fear, you can bring extra potions to help you out in a difficult fight. I would say not having the horde racials is only gonna be noticeable when you’re playing against top players while being a top player yourself, which is gonna be rare.
Who cares about windfury - if you encounter an enh shaman, just kite the poor soul to death with curse of exhaustion until they respec to elemental.
Just propaganda. If you’re good at playing with lock, you won’t have problems 95% of the time… plenty of sucky players, and if you end up fighting and losing vs really good player, chances are you would have lost even with racial too.
Engineering items help a lot if you’re willing to put the grind in, then you have various trinkets/offhand items that can help (skull of impending doom, linken’s boomerang etc), free action potions, limited invulnerability potions… And yeah our PvP trinket doesn’t have stuns on it but it does have fear iirc. Escape artist is also a solid PvP racial.
On the plus side, I reckon there are fewer locks on the alliance side (currently it’s always our guild’s most populated raid class) so you’ll probably have less competition for gear etc.
If you’re looking to 1v1 then Soul Link will still be crazy good, even as an alliance warlock
Escape artist got 1 min cd + int.+ ally lock feels more appreciated,cos of the stigma about them.
Lock kind of counter classes are warr rogue? Undead wont help there, orc stun resist is very good for sure , but gnome racials are equally good:)
Warriors arent an issue for Warlocks, undead rogues are and WotF is a big factor, even if you survive the initial stealth attack by saccing VW or something, they can get out of the fear and remain immune for 5 seconds, thats about 2 seconds longer than they need normally by then
Its not that a Horde lock is better, its that as Horde you wont have to face an UD rogue.
Just remember that both alliance and horde have advantages and dissadvantages.
As an alliance warlock:
You will have blessings while raiding. Blessing of Salvation is a HUGE buff that horde warlocks wont have. BoWisdom and Judgement of Wisdom helps with the mana too.
No paladins cleansing your dots / fear in PvP. Also, no shadow resistance aura. Only Priests will dispell and buff shadw resistance for horde.
No annoying undead rogues while dueling.
As a horde warlock:
You dont fight Undead rogues, unless you duel ofcs.
No shamans purging your Soul Link or VW shield.
No earthshocking while casting fear or shadowbolts.
No tremor or grounding totems.
I played a human warlock and raided up to AQ40. I don’t think I could have done that without BoSalvation.
Well… you barking at wrong tree and in wrong garden!
WoW IS the MMO that pioneered the dumbing down of PvP to 1v1v1v1vx battles…
The days where whole was bigger than the sum died when WoW came and introduced the one size fits all MMO theme park model where they had to design classes and dumb it down for “Me me me” generation.
Gone where the days of Ultima Online or DAOC to be exact, where people had the whole picture in mind… Gone were the days back in DAOC where classic so intrictly and sophisticated design … I can’t imagine a class as a Bard or Minstrel from DAOC even surviving a day in wow or any theme park mmo… most important class and skillful that made everyone click… yet:
had near zero dmg
had near zero heals
had near zero tanking
is worth near zero out of a group setting in PvE also/ leveling.
Yet, have such classes the captains and leaders of most competitive groups/guilds.
I really don’t think it’s as bad as people make out, sure the occasional well played ud rogue might give you trouble but as people said, most of the players just aren’t that great. Escape artist is a great racial in its own right. Besides, by far the most played class/encounter is against mages, they’re everywhere on horde side.
if you come prepared and have some decent engi tricks, bombs, rocket helm, net etc along with lips and elixer of poison resistance, you’ll be alright most of the time.
Another thing to remember is that in mirror matches, you’re likely to outgear horde locks. Ally locks are so in demand, you gear super fast. It’s also nice to be wanted by everyone!
One thing that a lot of people forget is that as alliance, you have a way more fun role to play in organised pvp (read WSG premade). Alliance lack the burst of ele shams, so often that burst role is filled by warlocks. Timing your sf burst on the efc is great!
Warlocks do good dps regardless, its not the end of the world if a fear breaks every now and then. You are basically a dark mage since you cant rely on your cc too hard. It balances out though, alliance premade pvp is lit with warlocks being the main damage dealers protected with bops.
If you want to be Alliance as a Warlock then choose PvE server, if you want to play on PvP you will have to accept the things Alliance has to deal with every day on a PvP server!
You only need to decide what is more important to you, an “easier” PvP experience or being an Alliance Warlock.
