Monday, October 1, 2007

The Warlock Rock

I've finally got sick of trying to run the Shattered Halls and Steamvaults for the gear I wanted to go to Kara with, primarily because said stuff never did actually drop. I'd discovered a viable alternative was the bind on pickup epics at the top of the leatherworking profession, and I'd already gained enough rep with a few factions to be able to pick up some nice ones.

However, my dilemma became that my two professions were engineering and skinning. I didn't want to drop engineering, so that meant skinning had to go. However, the next problem was that the AH at the time didn't have much light leather, and what they did have cost over a gold each.

Enter the Warlock.

I'd had a Warlock alt for a while, but I didn't enjoy playing it much because, although the playstyle is good for instances, for soloing I grew bored very quickly due to it being insanely overpowered. However, I realised that for rapid farming to support my main Hunter, it would be exactly what I was looking for. According to the information I've been able to find online, the Warlock currently holds the proverbial gold straw hat, with a BM Hunter still coming in second. Life Tap and Drain Life are apparently the reasons, in that they allow the Warlock to use mobs to regain health and mana, effectively allowing the class limited invincibility, and close to zero downtime.

Thus, my plan is to level him up as quickly as possible, while also sending light leather from WC to Mirsh, where I need it at this point for leatherworking. Once the lock gets high enough that soloing instances starts becoming a possibility, I'll drop mining for enchanting and focus on using it to make money via disenchanting blue drops from the Scarlet Monastery and RFD. Once I get the lock up, this should help me get my flying mount a lot faster, too.

Any advice people could give me on a good farming spec for the lock would be good, too...I've also been told that stam is the main attribute that they need...is that true?

6 comments:

Ashraf said...

I might suggest; you already have skinning and a high level character. As boring as it may be, you could easily figure out what skins you need to level up leatherworking, and gather them beforehand on your hunter. Any way you cut it, it's going to be far, far faster than leveling a new char. Then, when you have your hide/leather/scale stockpile assembled, drop skinning and grab your new skill. You won't even have refined deeprock salt as a sticking point; you don't need any of those recipes for leveling your skill (you'll know what I mean when you get up there).

As an aside though, just like engineering, getting leatherworking past 350 is a painful, costly, frustrating, painful (twice, cause it is ;}) proccess. You may want to crunch some numbers to see if the 3 BOP's are going to be worth it, especially since you're survival spec; Felstalker may be doing you just fine.

Xizang said...

Ashraf is right. If you want to become a leatherworker - go for it. But don't do it for the Ebon Netherscale set. Those were the very first items I had to get rid of once I skilled form MM/BM to SV/MM. They have no agility, except for the socket bonus. And tha fact they have no red sockets doesn't really make things better.

Leatherworking 350+ is a very awful experience. You have no idea how much clefthoof you are going to farm at a rate of maybe 15 per hour if you are lucky.
On top of that think about all the motes. And the primal nether. This means an average of 15 heroic instances if they are distributed so that everyone gets an even share.

My advice: Get airborn! Farm the hell out of outland in order to make the money to do so. Completing questlines as far as possible pays off almost the epic ground mount and the first flying mount.

Once this is done you will probably qualify for Kara in no time. ANd once you get a group, there are lots of things there that just waiting for Mirsh to pick them up. When I went to Kara I had my raid disenchant a couple of items that I considered down- or just sidegrades form ebon netherscale, but once I became SV, I regretted not having taken them.

Jesse said...

I agree completely with Ashraf and Xizang, but if you want a zero downtime Warlock go for Affliction. It improves your drains and eventually adds another one to it. With my lock I can start on the next mob before the previous one is even dead. Also, if you want to really overpower him find some cheap "of Shadow Wrath" greens on the AH. Stamina is better than intellect for Warlocks because you can always turn HP into MP.

Hunyann said...

I'd have to agree with the others here. It will be incredibly faster to farm outlands silly with your hunter to get the gold you need for that flying mount and Kara. Skinning is a great moneymaker. Think of it this way. Doing a speed run through the levels I can hit 60 in about 6 days played time, more if I do a bunch of solo instance runs for whatever. Now in 6 days played time, thats 144 hours, I can do ohh....around 35 instance runs assuming it takes me 4 hours to find, join,fill out, and run an instance with a group. And while I'm waiting for those groups I can do solo quests, farm leather, motes etc for even more gold. If your looking for gold in a short order using your hunter is the way to go. Now if you have an infinite period of time I'm all for supporting leveling up a warlock to farm mass quantities of critters at rediculous speeds(of course a few other classes can do this too).

Hunyann said...

Ohh and that was only taking into account the time to go from 1 to 60 asap. Throw in the 61-70 and your now talking doubling that time frame at least.

Hexapuma said...

Beware of the alt trap... once you start creating alts you seriously loose time from your main and as mentioned above even if you don't get sidetracked with BGs, gearing up etc, you'll most likely to postpone your epic mount with your alt.