Whats the best race for lock iyo?

[diogenes]

Certainly, Paladins are a very strong support, but Shamans also contribute things like Totems, Water Walking, and Chain Heal.

All of which are pretty garbage compared to paladins in pvp. Seriously, water walking? Admittedly that can have a slight advantage in ab, but considering that paladins can shield themselves once every 5 minutes and spam heal with immunity, that alone is far better than anything a shaman can do as far as supporting a lock in pvp.

And you're asking what your faction does for you instead of what you do for your faction. With the disadvantage WotF poses to an alliance lock's utility, Horde simply tops out for PvP.

Good argument, but i'm interested to know as to why no one brought up fear ward. Can't tell you how many times a fear ward on a flag carrier has allowed the flag carrier to escape. Sure its not as prevalent as wotf, but you encounter it fairly often. While it is true that there are alot more undead players than dwarf priests, fear ward is on a 30 second cd instead of a 2 minute cd, And since we're talking about top tier min/maxing, anyone who rolls anything but a dwarf for a pirest alliance side is playing suboptimally. Alliance is NOT a bad choice for a lock.

Sure, 1v1 wotf makes a HUGE difference, but the larger the fight the less it really matters. Just for example, if locks were really so bad alliance side, then why is it so common for an ally lock to be accepted in alliance premades? There's a lot a lock can do, and its not all about fear spamming.

orcs for pve suck i guess

Why do orcs suck for pve? If you want to play horde I honestly cant see a single reason why you would pick ud over orc. WotF is nice for pvp, but stun resist is so much more helpful due to there being many many many more stun effects than fear effects. Further, since you mentioned pve specifically, wotf is literally the only advantage ud locks have (i guess the 10 sr is nice for twemp tanking, but not necessary). However, wotf isnt an advantage in pve. Generally, if there's a fear mechanic in a boss, you dont want to resist it just in the off chance that the tank gets feared for one reason or another. But even if wotf allowed you to miss a fear mechanic with immunity, its only once ever 2 minutes and none of the fear mechanics last longer than 10 seconds. That kind of dps increase is so minimal that I don't think it warrants anyone saying "orcs suck for pve," especially when there are only a handful of bosses that actually have fear mechanics.

[Aethelwulf]

Chain Heal is not garbage. If it's on 1.12 mechanics a Chain Heal should actually auto-target low hp players for secondary hits now. Shamans also have purge and totems you are overlooking.

As for Fear Ward, you are neglecting that it is dispellable and that it only works on Fears, not Seduce. On the alliance side, only Warlocks, Rogues, and Druids can trinket out of Seduce. This leaves Horde Warlocks with a form of crowd control even through Fear Ward. Contrast Horde side where half the classes are running around with Will of the Forsaken racials plus Shamans who can drop Tremor totems which cancel fears and charms in an AoE (ain't that a blast). And before you recommend wanding it, remember that you often have to cross through the enemy's firing line to enter the range to hit their totems.

As for orcs sucking for PvE, that's because Cannibalize makes life easy on Undead Warlocks. Since Warlocks use health as their mana pool too it means that Undead Warlocks don't even need to bother with food or bandages. Orc Warlocks have to DoT and drain more carefully.

[Numi]

Chain Heal is not garbage. If it's on 1.12 mechanics a Chain Heal should actually auto-target low hp players for secondary hits now. Shamans also have purge and totems you are overlooking.

As for Fear Ward, you are neglecting that it is dispellable and that it only works on Fears, not Seduce. On the alliance side, only Warlocks, Rogues, and Druids can trinket out of Seduce. This leaves Horde Warlocks with a form of crowd control even through Fear Ward. Contrast Horde side where half the classes are running around with Will of the Forsaken racials plus Shamans who can drop Tremor totems which cancel fears and charms in an AoE (ain't that a blast). And before you recommend wanding it, remember that you often have to cross through the enemy's firing line to enter the range to hit their totems.

As for orcs sucking for PvE, that's because Cannibalize makes life easy on Undead Warlocks. Since Warlocks use health as their mana pool too it means that Undead Warlocks don't even need to bother with food or bandages. Orc Warlocks have to DoT and drain more carefully.

Chain heal is useless in pvp, focus fire is the way to win the game, if you're spamming chain heal when there's 1 target taking damage, you're losing the game for your team.

Succubus is not useful at all in any premade BG. It doesn't have inate resistance, so banish lasts 10 seconds on it, it's squishy as ****, dies in two hits, it's dispellable, interuptable etc. There's 0 reason to run a succubuss over a felhunter, as the felhunter can guarantee 8 seconds of CC on a healer with the kick, as well as purge, defensive dispell etc. Succubus is not something you should ever bring up in a group pvp discussion please.

Orcs are superior in PvE because their pets deal extra damage, so the few times you'll ever use a pet to DPS, orcs does more DPS. Undead racial is shit in PvE because it is too conditional:

1. There must be a humanoid corpse nearby (dead friends)
2. You must be low on health
3. You must have a bandage CD
4. Your healers have to be so oom they can't even throw you a hot
5. You need to have 8 seconds without getting interrupted to gain 1 single life tap.

Sure, it's not impossible, but undeads racial is useless in PvE because the one time you have a chance to use it, it'll be because you are so far behind that it won't make a difference.

[Noselacri]

Good argument, but i'm interested to know as to why no one brought up fear ward.

Because there needs to be a dwarf priest and he needs to take the time to cast it on you. Sometimes that happens, and that's nice, but it's not consistent at all unless you run a premade with a dwarf priest. If you do, the buff goes on the flag carrier or maybe the arms warrior who's got a pocket healer, so only one person benefits from it anyway. The priest might have time to cast it twice (30s cooldown) in the pre-game countdown, but that's it. It matters for one person on the team. You can't buff up everyone with it.

Compared to WOTF and Tremor Totem, that's a lot of limitations for a single fear resist.

- It doesn't make you immune for x seconds like WOTF does
- It doesn't trigger repeatedly or on multiple targets like Tremor Totem does
- It doesn't remove charm and sleep effects like WOTF and Tremor both do
- It can be dispelled by Felhound, or the warlock can just cast a random fear at a time when it suits him to remove the buff before he needs to really land a fear out of necessity.

You see someone with Fear Ward, you open with Fear or Devour. It's so easy to counter, whereas WOTF cannot be countered and Tremor Totem is a bit awkward since you have to destroy the totem which takes some doing. Even with a macro to pet or wand it, it's not some instant action, nor always safe to do.

It's also a matter of availability. Fear Ward comes from one of the least common class/race combos whereas WOTF comes from the most common race and Tremor Totem comes from one of the most common classes. The totem affects everyone in the shaman's group, every three seconds or whatever it is, and can be spammed at will. Fear Ward is nice and all, but it's a minor afterthought while WOTF and Tremor are a constant hard-counter.

[Aethelwulf]

Chain heal is useless in pvp, focus fire is the way to win the game, if you're spamming chain heal when there's 1 target taking damage, you're losing the game for your team.

You act like DoTs and AoEs don't exist. You are also acting like heals don't outscale damage.

Succubus is not useful at all in any premade BG. It doesn't have inate resistance, so banish lasts 10 seconds on it, it's squishy as ****, dies in two hits, it's dispellable, interuptable etc.

There's 0 reason to run a succubuss over a felhunter, as the felhunter can guarantee 8 seconds of CC on a healer with the kick, as well as purge, defensive dispell etc. Succubus is not something you should ever bring up in a group pvp discussion please.

Aside from the amusing possibility of gearing 5 piece Nemesis and giving your Succubus +20 Stamina and +120 all resists (or 5piece Felheart for 15 stam and +100 resists) or your Succubus getting buffed with a Power Word: Fortitude, you're neglecting the fact that the Succubus is invisible so to 2shot it they would have to see it first, which they won't unless they have a Warlock on their side (and Warlocks are very unpopular on Alliance, esp. for PvP) or someone is actually using an invis detection elixir. And while Seduce is indeed dispellable, it's harder to dispel if for instance you Seduce the guy with the dispel (did we mention Paladins and Priests cannot trinket out of Seduce? Undead Priests can WotF out though). And in a 1v1 there is something to be said for the ability to bandage + soul fire someone with 15 seconds.

Orcs are superior in PvE because their pets deal extra damage, so the few times you'll ever use a pet to DPS, orcs does more DPS. Undead racial is shit in PvE because it is too conditional

Pet damage is nice but when your pet does maybe 20% of your total damage, a 5% increase to their damage output is pretty negligible in the scheme of things. You're not a hunter where your pets hit for huge damage. Unless you have the double pet damage trinket and/or are running a Succubus with MD, Battle Shout, Flametongue/WF Totem, etc. into a fight you're not particularly going to notice the racial's boost to your damage.

Sure, it's not impossible, but undeads racial is useless in PvE because the one time you have a chance to use it, it'll be because you are so far behind that it won't make a difference.

... It is far from useless. For one thing, there are a very large amount of humanoid and undead enemies throughout your PvE career. It's a perfectly decent way to heal up out of combat as a fresh corpse is more convenient than expending food or bandages. Also, you don't just use it when you are low on health. You also use it when you are low on mana because you can life tap your mana back up and then cannibalize the HP back. It's also usable in combat while being a separate CD from Bandages. I've had it happen when streams of aggro left me using my VW to tank while I was furiously DoTting everything, life tapping for mana, bandaging, draintanking, and resummoning Voidwalkers until I die from OOM and aggro. Cannibalize probably would have made it manageable.

[Noselacri]

No race really gets anything that matters in raids. Pet DPS - if you use a pet at all; remember the technically highest DPS spec sacrifices the pet - is so low that +5% is irrelevant. Hell, +5% intellect for gnomes is better. For PvE, race is pretty irrelevant. Leveling a warlock is easy enough that Cannibalize is a minor convenience.

For PvP, undead and orc are both great. Gnome is alright but snares tend to be spammable, and you have no movement abilities anyway so druids aren't gonna root you, so it's mostly for countering Frost Nova. Mage is already your best matchup, though. Human is crap until arenas in TBC.

[Numi]

... It is far from useless. For one thing, there are a very large amount of humanoid and undead enemies throughout your PvE career. It's a perfectly decent way to heal up out of combat as a fresh corpse is more convenient than expending food or bandages. Also, you don't just use it when you are low on health. You also use it when you are low on mana because you can life tap your mana back up and then cannibalize the HP back. It's also usable in combat while being a separate CD from Bandages. I've had it happen when streams of aggro left me using my VW to tank while I was furiously DoTting everything, life tapping for mana, bandaging, draintanking, and resummoning Voidwalkers until I die from OOM and aggro. Cannibalize probably would have made it manageable.

So while leveling. I was talking PvE / competitive content. Picking a race you like is more important than an undead racial while leveling, because you'll use it like 10 times between 1 and 60 because bandages and food heals quicker.

Human is crap until arenas in TBC.

I'd disagree, the entire point that rouges can not get close to your healers in a premade battle is a big thing and can easily change battles.

Sure, most of the premades doesn't have rogues, but solo pvp it's even stronger.

It's not useless, trust me.

[Aethelwulf]

Ultimately in the course of PvE, it is true enough that it really doesn't matter what race you pick in the end. Humans will progress faster on onerous rep grinds but once they're done, that benefit won't matter anymore either. To a mild extent being Undead helps with its +10 shadow resist, cannibalize, and ability to throw off fears from select bosses, but none of that is critical. You won't really feel a racial doing something for you in PvE unless you are tanking Twin Emperors and squeezing out that 315 shadow resist or a human doing rep grinds.

The Human racial Perception bonus by itself isn't very good afaict but if you combine it with a Felhunter's Paranoia you can actually cast a solid detection radius for those 20 seconds. Given that alliance Warlocks are better off using Felhunters in PvP anyway given the general unreliability of Seduce vs so many undead and tremor totems, that's not a problem. If you really want to detect rogues, however, I would still consider using Catseye Goggles (from Engineering) on top of that for an even stronger rogue detection radius.

Generally though, in PvP you have to know you are up against Rogues in order to make good use of Perception. In solo PvP it is generally a useless racial because of the issues involved in being aware that you are facing a Rogue. Certainly it's great for duels and arenas, but even in battlegrounds, when you get caught out of position it's not much help.

[Numi]

The Human racial Perception bonus by itself isn't very good afaict but if you combine it with a Felhunter's Paranoia you can actually cast a solid detection radius for those 20 seconds. Given that alliance Warlocks are better off using Felhunters in PvP anyway given the general unreliability of Seduce vs so many undead and tremor totems, that's not a problem. If you really want to detect rogues, however, I would still consider using Catseye Goggles (from Engineering) on top of that for an even stronger rogue detection radius.

Generally though, in PvP you have to know you are up against Rogues in order to make good use of Perception. In solo PvP it is generally a useless racial because of the issues involved in being aware that you are facing a Rogue. Certainly it's great for duels and arenas, but even in battlegrounds, when you get caught out of position it's not much help.

Regarding perception:

That + felhunter aura is enough to give me ~35 yards detection on rogues if I'm facing them, which is more than enough alone.

While true that it doesn't work if you're not prepared for it, it's pretty common for it to be useful in premades, esp sniping a druid trying to stealth through, giving you a huge lead at the start of a WSG game.