WARLOCK in Burning Crusade Classic: Is It Any Better Now?

[Music] hello ladies and gentlemen willie here with tbc confirmed it's about time we did a little bit of a class update let's take a look back at each class in the burning crusade the performance overall and hopefully help you make your choice moving forwards we will be looking at what's new in terms of talents and abilities leveling pve who's the new king of the meter pvp has much changed and tier sets which actually exist for every specialization now and through this i hope to answer is your class any better now today a class i bet quite a few of you guys have been looking forwards to it's got a real reputation for being a top performer in tbc for all areas of the game i mean it's a class that is designed around controlling demons how could it be anything but amazing in an expansion flavored around fighting an endless army of them ladies and gentlemen i present the warlord warrior what are you doing here this is the uh lock video right yes yes it is you just go back right through that portal they do a lot of damage i like doing a lot of damage i'm sure you do everyone you know when your name is at the top of the damage meter and okay right shoot go on get out of here do i have to reroll taking my world buffs away that's it leave back for the portal go on man these melee classes they okay where was i ah yes i present the warlock the time of the purples is finally here warlocks historically and well have been pretty much always up there in terms of performance in all areas of the game with classic as the only real version where they have struggled a little bit well at least in the early to mid game period of it if two big things have changed to make lock's life better and this really does go for every class but there is much more readily available hit gear distributed out in tbc now as well as being able to pick a lot of it up for the new profession dual crafting on top of this the debuff cap is raised to 40 so you can even play deep affliction and be able to fully dot up your target without too much concern that you'll be pushing other valuable debuffs off oh and they just scale exceptionally well too as the expansion goes on so let's make a start on this what's new then quite a bit especially more utility or convenience to focus spells remember soul shards from classic yeah they're still a thing some of your more powerful spells or demon summons will need them and as somebody who's played a lock throughout the whole of classic to be honest they were rarely ever too much of an inconvenience you just sort of get used to needing them for various things also it's worth a mention that summoning stones outside of instances can actually be used to well summon people now which is a really nice change so you don't always need a lock speaking of summoning ritual of summoning get some updates in a later patch in fact on the launch of tbc you couldn't summon in never storm at all as netherstorm's chaotic energies make summoning magically impossible wow big lore gameplay you can also summon inside of instances again as of a later patch providing the target meets the requirements like having the correct heroic key or being attuned to the raid ritual of souls was added in tbc works kind of like a summoning portal you need two other players to click and then it will provide 10 master level health stones much better than having to individually make 10 of them and trade them out as you currently have to in classic saves a lot of shards and a lot of time when this spell was first added it took 5 minutes to summon the soul well too i guess blizzard didn't want it to be too convenient did they thankfully it was changed down to three seconds in a later patch incinerate is a new destruction spell it does comparable damage to shadowbolt with an immolate on the target i'm assuming this was supposed to open up destruction as a real fire damage dealing tree and as we will see later that didn't really take off for a number of reasons though fire locks may still see some play at times falama a different type of active armor buff to maintain which all but replaces demon armor more or less all of the time really it provides bonus spell damage and healing received as well as being upgradeable through talents it's just a lot of stats for free the bonus seals stack up very well in pvp or even whilst tanking on certain bosses too sol shatter is the new oh no button for warlocks in pve mostly for destruction an instant 50 threat reduction for more or less anything on your screen needs a shard to use though and has a pretty big five minute cooldown though threats should already be less of a concern due to salvation being available for both factions and a 10 further threat reduction from the destructive reach talent though if you are spamming your aoe you can easily overtake any tank if they aren't blasting on threat which is done through seed of corruption your new best friend in aoe fires off a debuff that when the target takes a certain amount of damage including damage dealt by friendlies will explode for heavy aoe damage it doesn't apply corruption to everything either that came in their later version of the game meaning that this is spammable and it hits really hard and unlike current warlock aoe and one of the big reasons this spell is so good is that it can crit as it's not considered a periodic or channeled effect this ability takes warlocks single-handedly from kind of okay on aoe to in most circumstances the best even more so than mages leveling wise warlocks in classic were pretty good now in tbc they are more or less just an improved version of that now i've leveled two warlocks to 60 because i rather like the class and for me i thought the best way to go was some variation of drain tank using succubus as a pet and balancing your health and mana pool for the burning crusade i reckon that demonology looks to be quite a bit more of an attractive option than it does in classic thanks to certain talents being just overall improved or new ones added also we get the fel guard at the end of the tree a beefier hard hitting and just well overall an upgrade on the voidwalker you can even have some variation of slsl by as early as level 61 but you are missing quite a few key talents also your demons gain a percentage of your stats too so they scale up wither you just making them overall more useful but we're starting to cross over into talking about talents a bit here which i like to cover in pve suffice to say for levelling there's a number of options really i always just encourage people to play around with the class try out some different talents and see what they think of it i can see myself starting out as demonology but speaking of pve let's get into that and we're going to start it off with demonology because it's not just only a leveling spec at lower gear levels in the expansion it should be playable in raids and dungeons it's worth opening up with a special mention to an item from classic the black book drops off razorgore and bwl shouldn't be too hard to pick up in tbc it's changed to look like this instead noticeably now working on the felguard giving him 325 attack power which ain't half bad i guess we should talk about what's new with this demon and why he's such a great addition to the somewhat unwilling team he's got a taunt so yeah turn that one off in dungeons he's got intercept which works exactly how the warrior one does and it has a minimum range on it so good demo locks will have a stay command for their pet so they'll actually be able to stun targets off you there's a cleave for some well cleave damage and demonic frenzy a stacking attack speed buff so you'll want this to be at max stacks before you hit him with a black book also and this one goes for all pets and demons is avoidance a passive 50 chance to avoid aoe which was added so pets can do stuff in pv without just dying to random damage good luck all the same convincing your healers to actually heal your demon though here is a talent tree that may come in early game new features are in such as mana feed demonic knowledge resilience and tactics they really had a field day naming these talents didn't they of course we have belguard at the bottom of the tree soul link has changed a little bit in classic it was 30 damage reduction and 3 damage now it's 20 damage reduction and 5 damage you get as many talents as you can in destruction to keep improved shadow bolt rolling the reason you have one point in corruption is one you don't really have any to spare and two if you reduced it anymore you'd still be on gcd so it's kind of pointless to put more than one point unless you can fully talent it also fire and spell stones now go in the one slot instead of the offhand so free wand if you don't have one that you would otherwise use and they keep the effects of bonus fire damage or a self magic dispel which can be quite good in some cases there is also a more late game variant where you can pick up ruin for bigger shadow bolts using succubus as your main demon but this demon is such a liability it's barely more tanky than an imp and it doesn't look like you can pick up master summoner either so if the suck dies so does your damage not because of the damage she's putting out but the 15 extra you get from having her active so you're gonna need some solid pet management and healers who heal pets and yeah i'm just not overly too sold on this over just going deep destruction once you've got gear and pressing the damage bolt i think demo will be fun early on though next spec then affliction it's kind of in a similar place to demonology however it brings raid wide utility on top of that it's good early as it's not so reliant on gear here's what a build may look like and now that the debuff cap has been raised warlocks can actually use their damage over time effect so the free 10 hit you get in this talent tree is really helpful at low gear levels of course in tbc damage over time still doesn't create or gain any benefits from spell haste they only scale with your spell damage but their flat damage early on is pretty solid not dps topping but good well on single target at least if you're hitting multiple enemies that will live for a while they are really good new additions are an updated and much better improved drain sole this is actually worth picking up for levelling now as well in power corruption for better scaling shadows embraced as a five percent physical damage reduction on the target if a boss is hitting hard or considered a threat this is a pretty big deal we also have male addiction which is three percent more bonus damage from your cursive elements and in a later patch curse of elements and shadows are just combined together into one button which means talented 13 more damage taken from pretty much all spell damage sources which is pretty good you still get improved imp2 as well as healthstone so for a damage dealer you are helping out the tanks quite a bit whether this level of support will be required for any bosses or you just want another deep destro yeah that remains to be seen just like with demo there is a later game version which just picks up ruin again for bigger shadow balls again this will depend whether you value the utility of this spec or a class that can just do more damage we've got contagion near the bottom of the tree 5 more damage to a few of your dots including seed of corruption which already hits like a truck and of course unstable affliction hits hard if dispelled in pvp hits the healer back really hard and puts a nasty 5 second silence on them too you also want to keep the spell up all the time in pve if you are deep affliction but what you should expect to see especially once people start getting those juicy crafted sets or for certain by tier five are a lot of destruction warlocks so once you have your hands on a good amount of hit and quick gear it'll be time to make the swap do something like this and honestly there isn't all that much different from how it is in classic there's some threat reduction on destructive reach backdraft for the occasional free shadow bolts and a bit of extra crit we've got things like never protection and soul each which are taken here but if the defensive stats aren't needed you can easily just put these points into improved immolate instead and just like with classic for destruction you're looking to go into demonology to get demonic sacrifice for that 15 bonus shadow damage then at the bottom of the destruction tree we have shadow of flame which adds a lot of scaling to your big main spells and finally shadow fury which isn't really taken for pve since it would be that or choosing demonic sacrifice which isn't really a choice it does do some damage on top of the stun though more for pvp as for the play style of destruction it's definitely quite a bit less involved than the other two where you are tracking your demon and your dot timers but this you were you press shadow bolt until the red bars on your screen have gone that's pretty much it you may have noticed that all the fire related talents are being missed out on here so what's the deal with that then is fire destruction just not a thing at all well it has a few issues though i'm not gonna 100 say you will never see it but it should be way less common because demonic sacrifice really forces you to pick one type of damage as do certain items like shadow weave or spell fire aoe damage wise whilst you'll be able to get more out of hellfire if you're going into a fire warlock style of play it doesn't in any way match up to the damage you can get from cedar corruption shadowbolt just has better base scaling than incinerators and the big one improved shadowbolt this makes it so the more locks you stack the better it gets basically it does cap out eventually but it's almost like you can consider it being a permanent uptime on a flat 20 increased shadow damage taken against the main target which is just enormous and whilst fire would be able to get improved scorch which would be 15 guaranteed bonus damage against the target it doesn't quite compete improved shadow belt will also be nice for your shadow priests as they're only going to be consuming a stack through mind blast so whilst warlocks aren't exactly the most exciting specialization wise it makes up for it with a massive crits and being among the top two dps classes consistently throughout the expansion also the aoe lock spring if they can just spam cast is number one extremely powerful spec overall expects to see a lot of people who like being up there near the top of the meters to be considering the warlock for pve on top of that warlocks are more than just great dps on a number of encounters they are actually tanked such as leo ferris and serpent shrank cabin companion in tempest keep illidan in black temple and alethes in sun well plateau that is quite a bit of tanking majority of which needs the warlock 2 have farmed out resist sets mainly from a badge of vendors by alethis where you just stack stamina instead talent-wise like many things it'll depend on the content difficulty the warlock has an easy plus 70 spell resistor all just from getting master demonologists with a fel hunter out on top of a flat 20 damage reduction from soul link and then just spam away on searing pain and that's your tanking and i've managed to get by so far without ever needing to change specs for the likes of twin emperors in classic and just putting on as much shadow resist as i can since the start of aq40 but tbc has tuned up quite a bit more baseline compared to classics so i guess at the worst you hearth out and go respect to make the raid easier for everybody and i've always quite liked tanking things i think it's interesting and it breaks up the usual gameplay a bit so then for pve the class is versatile it has a number of different viable specs throughout the expansion is one of the top single target dps and the best on aoe so that's already looking in a pretty good place is pvp a similar story then amazingly yes it is lockscape without a doubt one of the most obnoxious pvp specs to have ever existed in the game but before we get onto that i feel like i have to give a mention to destruction because it's the only time where you will really see the full talent tree being used with talents like nether protection soul leech backdraft and of course a shadow fury into strong burst spell damage combos an example spec like this is definitely more for fun in battlegrounds as the reason you rarely see people play this is without soul link warlocks are just really squishy and you need to actually cast to get things done which is never a good thing on top of not being able to pick up fell domination in arena unless you sacrifice damage which is a tough choice to make as with every class and spec i bet we'll see some people aiming high with destruction maybe in comps that aim to apply a lot of pressure early possibly with a shaman for heroism we'll see but the majority of the time like the vast majority of the time you will see sl sl siphon life soul link there is a deep affliction variation you do see at high ranks sometimes playing unstable affliction to apply a huge amount of pressures against healer but like deep destruction you're pretty liable to just get trained down here is slsl there is some variation on preference here but this is just a general idea most of the time you'll have a fell hunter out for that passive 70 resist to all schools of magic against melee clades swapping to avoid walker is a viable tactic for another 10 passive physical damage reduction drain spells on our 30-yard baseline up from 20 so 36 when talented on top of the new talent siphon soul making both drain spells hit pretty hard against targets with a number of dots running on them one point in shadows embraces taken for additional dispel protection and over in the demonology tree we have improved health funnel and demonic resilience to make your demon a bit more tankier the lock is at heart still a real pet class and good pet management is what will separate the good from the great because on a base level honestly slsl and i say this as a warlock enthusiast is kind of like the wow version of the noob tube or picking the stealth archer in skyrim or getting the drake sword at the start of dark souls the skill floor to get good results is pressing one two three on your dots and then fear or draining i reckon at low ratings there's going to be a huge amount of things like resto druid and lock gatekeeping at the high end of course there are absolutely plays to be made such as fell downing out a second fell hunter for a blanket sounds or an interrupt keeping tabs on your pet to stop the opposing healer drinking making the correct use of your fell hunters interrupt and dispel in any event i expect to see a lot of warlock in pvp if in classic they were mushrooms in tbc they definitely come out from their hiding place tier sets now if i can say one thing about the locks in tbc their tier sets are all amazing in the looks department tier four void heart raymond the two set is a very good proc for bonus damage when using either fire or shadow spells you definitely want to get your tier 4 two set to the locks the four set is a bit more duration on two of your darts which you're likely going to be using both of them in the early stages of the game so not bad tier 5 the corrupter raymond to set some solid healing for your pet i actually like the sound of this for demonology as healers really wouldn't have to focus on your demon anymore but destruction will have probably taken the reigns over by that point the force that if i understand it correctly means that either of your main damage spells will increase the periodic damage of the corresponding dot for the remainder of the duration and apparently when i was taking a look into it in a bit more detail it stacks infinitely with the everlasting affliction town in wrath of the lich king as well so yeah hang on to your corrupt maybe that'll be a bit of a thing then finally tier 6 the malefic raymond now this is a warlock set and of course the one that brings out the wings the two set is pretty disappointing to be honest a very minor heel upon dart damage the four set though this is exceptionally good pretty much all locks will be full shadow bolt mode by this point in tier six and six percent more flat damage on your entire rotation is something you will want as a priority so after having had a brief chat about the warlock the things they're good at and the other things they're good at are we able to answer warlock in tbc is it any better now surprise surprise it's a yes from me it's probably overall the quote-unquote best clash you can play locks are literally good at everything dungeons pvp pve single target aoe the class is great at farming it's still a solid leveler they start strong and they just get better and better so this of course means you should expect to see a huge amount of people looking to re-roll to this class or just continue playing them you know what that means a lot of competition for gear and maybe for braid spots i think back pretty classic that i thought this would have been the case with fury warriors but with 40 man rage you can just fit so many dps in there there's pretty much always a demand for good geared furies with 25 mans you've already got a lot more utility focus specializations in there to boost up the raid's performance as a whole so there will be a lot more of a limit as to how many people you can bring along just to blast on dps especially when you're in competition with another class for that top spot very often just something to think about depends what kind of guild you intend to play in and how performance oriented they are so there we are the warlock of course i'll be sticking with this class as my main for tbc and i'm really looking forward to it anything else you would have liked me to have added or given a mention do drop it down below as always though i do hope you enjoyed the video and i'll be seeing you in the next one very soon [Music] you

Channel: WillE

Views: 168,763

Keywords: the burning crusade, tbc, tbc beta, WoW Classic tbc, World of Warcraft, warlock

Id: 3nQ7TZ9il7g

Length: 21min 0sec (1260 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021