Is the (Shadow)Priest the better Mage in WOW?

[Icebird]

Interesting how a threat titled "Is a shadow priest better than a mage?" has turned into a long dicussion on "is Mage AoE better than warlock AoE?".

Damage aside, Arcane Explosion is much more flexible than Hellfire. You can cast it on the run. There's no health penalty. You're casting time is only limited by mana pool, and whether enemies are beating on you or not.

Hellfire has more limitations, but it can still get the job done. The key is in preparation. One preparation is to mitgate the damage to self from the spell. My warlock carries around a stack of fire protection pots, and they're very effective. If you have a priest in the party, they can pre-shield you. You can also sacrifice a void walker.

The next step is to limit the amount of interuptions to the channeling. That means waiting until someone else in the party has aggroed the swarm in question. Concentration helps. Shields help.

Even then its pretty unusual to channel for the full 15 seconds. I find the monsters are either all dead, I've been interupted, or there is a good reason for me to move and break the channeling. On the other hand, I can't think of many situations where a mage has spammed 15 arcane explosions in a row either.

The situations you use it are much more limited that for a mage (who can use AE for general grinding, killing an escaping runner, a finisher, etc etc). But when you have a swarm of non-elite monsters bearing down on your party and you want to nuke them to hell and back, the difference between Hellfire and Arcane Explosion seems pretty small.

Chris

Edit: Because I was overusing the word "effective"

[savaughn]

Sure a character (mage or warlock) who SPECIALIZES TALENTS in AoE damage gets better dps. Not everyone's so obsessed. Skan's arguement is fairly speculative because it requires a talent specialization. Why shouldn't a main caster who specializes in an area surpass another.
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I'd be very surprised if anyone had both Demonic Sacrifice and Emberstorm - that's a 30/0/21 build. You'd be zeroing out Affliction in exchange for those two abilities (and improved corruptionfe tap are as fundamental in a 'lock build as IAE and IAM in a mage one). By comparison, anyone who gets Arcane Power has IAE anyway. Arcane Power is a great talent for PvP and a 17/24 fire/arcane build maximizes the utility of scorch and AM/AE, making it a fantastic grouping + PvP build.

Since the comparison is a dest. specced warlock, I was trying to compare apples to apples and give the analogous arcane specced mage numbers and incorporate the crit info. At that point, you're comparing two people specced with overlapping goals. Even using the demonic sac. numbers, the Mage wins the DPS contest and does so without the restrictions built into hellfire. That seems to confirm the popular idea that the Mage is the kind of AoE.

[Drasca]

Even using the demonic sac. numbers, the Mage wins the DPS contest and does so without the restrictions built into hellfire.  That seems to confirm the popular idea that the Mage is the kind of AoE.
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It'd win burst dps for about 5-10 seconds every 3 minutes, plus whatever crit happens. As for damage within say 30 seconds worth of aoe total, I'm not as confident that'd be so. Its certainly cheaper, and all mages get 'must have' talents from arcane tree. . . whereas warlocks. . . out must-haves are spread out.

Still, its blatantly obvious warlocks would have to give up a lot more for the same effect. 15 points for IAE, 17 for IHF that's only 70% effective. +16 points for a lot more burst aoe damage, +21 for more damage (more consistent, but at cost of pet abilities vs increased mana costs and available 10 secs once every 3 min).