Are all 3 specs Viable?

[bigaxe]

So im thinking about rolling a lock, and was wondering if all 3 specs are viable for leveling/raiding. Also is there anything i should know about vanilla locks such as bugs, leveling gear,farming tips, trade professions ect.

[Youfie]

What you should know about Vanilla lock:

1. Don't count on dotting shit in raids, 80% of the time you won't use a single dot, you'll rely on your Shadow Bolt / Shadow Burn mainly.

2. You need a lot of +Hit to be efficient.

For levelling, destruction is fun, but not the most efficient. I'd advise you to go Affliction.

[bigaxe]

Thanks for the help i think ill try destruction, are warlocks in demand on this server for raiding? And how is warlock dps with the debuff limit so low?

[FattyMcGee]

Take a look at the warlock guide thread for what spec to go for leveling/raiding/instancing. Unfortunately vanilla wasn't very forgiving when it came so viability of specs there was always a cookie cutter for specific roles and anything else just paled in comparison or didn't work at all.

[Drain]

The first 2 trees are good, and should get all your points pre 60. If you do get Destruction pre 60, you should just stop at Shadowburn. That can be useful to finish off mobs or fight players. But otherwise Destruction isn't of any real use until you're already 60, and then only up to 21 points(RUIN). Even with Destruction, you'll still use shadow rather than fire because Blizzard didn't properly design the class to use fire. A full fire build simply isn't effective in Classic for several reasons, one of which is the lack of a spammable fire spell. It also doesn't help that T1 content is entirely immune to fire. Having full Destruction means that all you'll really do is Conflag every 10s, as opposed to spamming shadow the entire time and getting instants off Nightfall. Shadow has more spells and talents than fire does, and a spammable nuke, so there's no real reason to invest in fire. I guess they thought you could run Conflag for PvP... and in theory you could... but if you're building specifically for PvP, you may as well take Soul Link.

Blizzard just did not give a shit at all about Destruction until after Classic. It's one of the trees that got shat on, just like Assassin, Arcane, Moonkin, Protection(Paladin), etc. These are all trash trees to max out until after Classic. You'll stop at 21 and go no further. The talents at 21 are better than what's at the bottom of the tree. After Classic, Warlock gets Incinerate and some decent new fire talents, finally supporting fire as a more viable build. They also get self healing off the nukes and a nice immunity buff vs shadow+fire. This is when Destruction finally became good.

[Youfie]

Assassination is a very good tree for a Rogue PvP-wise, and so is Destruction for a Warlock.
Destruction is just way harder to play in PvP tan a braindead SL, and requires lot of gear.

[Drain]

I said they're good up to 21. I can't recall the last time I've ever seen anyone with Vigor or Conflag.

[slverbaur]

Here is the correct answer:

For leveling: No. Affliction in various combinations. Some go demonolgy.

For pvp: Demonology or Destruction or SM/Ruin

For raiding: SM/Ruin or DS/Ruin.