by Koz1120
Saan wrote:
As others have touched on here, the spell pool defines a particular mage more than his special abilities. The special abilities arent insubstantial, but they are secondary to what spells are in the spellbook.
Lash of hellfire is good, but you can live without it if needed. 8 Mana for 1 extra die, fire damage, and reach is good, but its not exactly the most important thing in the deck. If they want to pay 8 to shatter it, it sucks, but its not game over or anything. Gauntlets of strength are a much better shatter target, in my opinion. Cheaper to shatter and they give you an extra die as well.
If you dont cast your lash until you need it, and you have a nullify or a decoy down (or, even better, a jinx on the enemy mage), you can do some serious damage in short order.
That said, the melee beat-down is something the warlock is inherently good at, but it doesnt have to be the ONLY thing that your book focuses on. The Skeletons in the base book are actually quite good for their cost, and people tend not to have much undead hate since there are so few undead creatures.
As far as the warlock vs beastmaster beat-down comparison - It is kind of a moot point, since both of these run pretty much the same spells. I run at least 1 of each nature enchantment buff in my warlock deck, and 2 bear strength. Idol of pestilence is a great pick for warlock in this matchup(or any beastmaster matchup).
Also, all of this talk of bloodreaper being strictly worse than the beastmaster pet - not sure I understand the reasoning. It starts you off losing a bit of health, but played properly, can net you health and deal more damage than the opposing pet. As far as needing a wounded target - its pretty easy to do a few damage to the enemy mage, and thats who you should be attacking anyways.
A lot of this stuff is dependant on metagame - builds can vary so widely in this game.
Lash of hellfire is good, but you can live without it if needed. 8 Mana for 1 extra die, fire damage, and reach is good, but its not exactly the most important thing in the deck. If they want to pay 8 to shatter it, it sucks, but its not game over or anything. Gauntlets of strength are a much better shatter target, in my opinion. Cheaper to shatter and they give you an extra die as well.
If you dont cast your lash until you need it, and you have a nullify or a decoy down (or, even better, a jinx on the enemy mage), you can do some serious damage in short order.
That said, the melee beat-down is something the warlock is inherently good at, but it doesnt have to be the ONLY thing that your book focuses on. The Skeletons in the base book are actually quite good for their cost, and people tend not to have much undead hate since there are so few undead creatures.
As far as the warlock vs beastmaster beat-down comparison - It is kind of a moot point, since both of these run pretty much the same spells. I run at least 1 of each nature enchantment buff in my warlock deck, and 2 bear strength. Idol of pestilence is a great pick for warlock in this matchup(or any beastmaster matchup).
Also, all of this talk of bloodreaper being strictly worse than the beastmaster pet - not sure I understand the reasoning. It starts you off losing a bit of health, but played properly, can net you health and deal more damage than the opposing pet. As far as needing a wounded target - its pretty easy to do a few damage to the enemy mage, and thats who you should be attacking anyways.
A lot of this stuff is dependant on metagame - builds can vary so widely in this game.
These are all good points. I actual touched on the spell school issue on the other forums. My argument was that the Wizard can do Fire just like the Warlock so that evens out, but I feel Arcane is superior to Dark. Arcane has many staples present in almost all builds. Nullify, Teleport, Mana Crystal, Dispel, Seeking Dispel, Harmonize, Reverse Magic, etc, are all big cards used in a lot of different books. Conversely, there are no Dark spells that find their way into almost every book (not even Ghoul Rot makes the cut every time). So, if schools define mages, the Wizard trumps the Warlock since he gets to pay the same cost for Fire spells (if he wants) and pays less for the much higher valued Arcane spells.
Another issue I have with justifying the Warlock through the Dark school is that as soon as they make another Dark mage that has better abilities than the Warlock, the Warlock will fade away since the new mage will pretty much be able to run all the same stuff as the Warlock. That's why the Warlock's abilities and support cards specific to him need to be as good as the other mages otherwise he will be overshadowed by the next Dark mage. I just don't think they are (barring a few like the Lash).
As far as the Bloodreaper, I expressed while I feel it is inferior to the pet. I think it's good, but not as good as the Pet. Opinions may differ though and I'm up for further discussion on it.