When do warlocks start coming into their own?

[rxvx]

to keep it short, when do we start feeling less 'clunky'? im in late 20s now and following the stickied guide but everything i do is kind of a drag and messy, between vw threat and weak dots and low survivability pvp just seems impossible with the low dmg i do right now

what im asking is, when do we pick up killing (both pve and pvp wise)?

[Xentro]

I'd say just once you get some decent +shadow spelldmg gear (shadoweave). At this point your dot's will start doing a lot more dmg. Siphon Life talent helps as well. Also your VW will often lose threat, mostly at the end of fights. It's not like on retail where it can just tank for you forever.

[rxvx]

right so late game basically? pvp too i assume since right now its too much tryharding for not great at all results

[Aethelwulf]

Slow damage is a bit of a problem, but if you do it right, you can stack DoTs while your pet tanks and kill multiple mobs simultaneously with DoT damage. If you're going at it one-by-one, then your kill speed will be slow. At the beginning I even do this with imps where I dot and kill two at the same time. If I don't think my pet can handle all the mobs, sometimes I split up the aggro and tank one of the mobs while I do them in with DoTs. And then there is fear kiting one or more of them while you DoT them to hell and back. Do it right and you can grind down a lot of mobs at the same time. That's how a Warlock's kill speed picks up.

If you're playing Alliance you can also do a Paladin+Warlock combo where you get Concentration Aura and heals from a Paladin, spec for 2/2 Intensity, and proceed to Hellfire mobs to death for quick AoE grinding now that you have 105% resistance to casting pushback. Hellfire is the highest DPS AoE in the game, although the spelldmg scaling is shit until TBC. Also playing Alliance as a Warlock is not a comfortable PvP experience. In TBC there are Horde Paladins though.

I also skill First Aid and use bandages for faster uptime.

[Numi]

to keep it short, when do we start feeling less 'clunky'? im in late 20s now and following the stickied guide but everything i do is kind of a drag and messy, between vw threat and weak dots and low survivability pvp just seems impossible with the low dmg i do right now

what im asking is, when do we pick up killing (both pve and pvp wise)?

I've never felt that clunky feeling while playing a warlock after level 10 and I honestly have no idea what you're talking about? How about you record a couple of minutes of you farming some mobs so we can see what might be going wrong?