I have been returning to my lock this expansion cause i missed playing that class, i haven’t played lock since mop/cata/wod.
I feel like i always have to piano the keyboard to make my dps atleast somewhat acceptable. I’ve seen retribution paladins with crap gear push 10-15k without much effort, and on my Arms warrior over at US which is far less geared i can push 10k+ on 3 targets with cooldowns, both still doing well single target also.
For me to even reach 10k i need insane RNG on Soul Conduit and Rain of Chaos, and pref 5+ targets and TIME.
My single target is laughable.
I have ocd, and try to do everything properly, learn everything and might come off as an elitist where i feel like i need to be the best at my class, but yet there are almost no classes i can compete with and people don’t want me in their groups and i get harassed several times for playing a lock.
I feel like i’ve hit a brick wall, also Affliction and Demonology is in no better state i’ve heard and i don’t fancy them much, would also be too much work swapping build now cause of legendary and covenants.
Is rerolling my only option if i want to be better?
Sorry for bothering, just frustrating and kinda at loss here. There is no way i could catch up if i was about to reroll now, which could potentially kill my motivation.
I do share your pain. We, as warlocks, can not even distantly keep up with other “meta classes” in mythic + environment no matter how hard you try, you cannot provide competative demage for your group and your utility leaves much to desired as well. If i were mage or hunter I would have had at least a choice to change spec and shine, as warlock i have such option defunct. I run mythic plus with my friends as pre-made group and no matter how hard i try i cannot provide decent contribution to the group. Total average dps is 400-500 less than the second spot in the meter.
For now I canceled subs hope the game will be kept afloat by MM, DKs, rogues and other “meta classes”.
P.S. the number of total runs in m+ over the course of the last 2 weeks.
Don’t be discouraged to those words, my friend! Stay Warlock if that if that is what you enjoy. I recommend looking up guides on Icy veins and wowhead and also watching streams of other Warlock players of your preferred spec to improve your DPS. That’s how I do my stuff. You can always ask the streamer questions about your spec/class if you have any usually they respond. There is also a discord server for warlocks: https:// discord gg/blackharvest (I removed the fullstop from the link as links aren’t allowed in posts) - Hopefully I’ve been of any help!
I see it the same way. Affliction still kinda works in raids, especially in boss encounters where you don’t have to move too much, but m+ is pure agony ATM. i have had runs where i did less overall damage than the tank :(.
i changed my talents in the mean time to grant me at least some AoE damage, but boy, it’s just no fun if your gear is ok, you do your best and still end up doing badly.
there have been really good suggestions in this forum, like nerfing malefic rapture but buffing all the dots, make some dots ignore GCD and making them tick longer, but it seems none of this has been implemented. 6-10 seconds to apply all your dots so that you can START doing damage is just far too long, especially if the damage you do in the end is still underwhelming.
Affliction is about a top 5 spec in raid, the other two specs are below average. All 3 specs are average for m+, some dungeons can favor Affliction because of movement, although, Demo is not as bad with movement as people might think. I personally think Demo is super fun for m+, and you can do just as good or even better damage than the other two specs, a lot of people are sleeping on Demo. One of the annoying things with demo is imps despawning in certain dungeons when you use the teleports, like on Theater of Pain and Necrotic Wake.
Overall, Affliction is clearly the best bet, but I personally find it incredibly boring, I thought I was going to enjoy it more tbh.
What matters in dungeons is the overall damage. If you do bad on AoEs but do some insane burst on bosses and get on equal footing damage wise with others, people wouldn’t be too hard on Locks.
But that’s not the case. If you wanna do AoE need to play a build where you can farm shards as fast as you can to spam imps and use explosion. But such a build is going to suck balls for boss fights.
And with the AoE build, its not like you are out-dpsing hunters and fire mages. You are barely keeping up with them.
Thus, your overall damage is simply lower than other viable classes/specs.
The problem with Affliction is the experience. If you are not invited to pugs, you can’t farm rio score. If you can’t farm rio score, you can’t do higher keys, you can’t join decent m+ guilds. It’s also frustrated to use 10 globals for dots and right about when you are going to spam cast MR, mobs just die.
Honestly, anyone that aims higher m+ or arena should just drop the class entirely. You wanna do raids? Be my guess, its a cancer there too (very viable ofc, not denying that, seen the logs). So much dot management and you are still under Unholy DKs whom have a very simple rotation.
Warlock was my main class from TBC. I always enjoyed playing demonology. However, I had to play in destro or affli because only they were adequate for heroic raiding most of the patches (and I don’t even tell about PvP). It was okay, I thought, since it’s impossible to balance all the specs.
In Shadowlands, persons who are responsible for the class design overdid themselves. In pure DPS class, the maximum one can get with the best-performing spec is “average”.
That’s how I see it now:
Raiding: affli is good on some fights of CR; the rest of the specs are trash;
Mythic+: people say that affli can DPS on super high keys, trash in low keys, the rest of the specs are trash;
PvP: check how many warlocks are there in the top 100/500… And I would assume these are the best players of the class, and much more, including gladiators, are not there. But to sum up: all the specs are a joke; some burst in destro and burst+kite in affli, which is ridiculously easy to avoid. Survivability is a joke.
It is enjoyable to play a class where you can be best if your player skills are the best, or good if your skills are corresponding. But there is nothing fun in being able to be average by doing your maximum. Unfortunately, the current design of the class doesn’t allow to perform good. It’s not even a problem of numbers for affli, but an issue of mechanics: it just doesn’t work. And I have no idea which internal tests were used to decide that demo’s DPS is adequate now. It is not. I don’t even tell that since Legion demonology has boring gameplay, and malefic gasp doesn’t feel like affli - it’s subjective. But take a look at the numbers.
I don’t have any desire to play other classes. Since it’s very unlikely that it will be updated in the following months, I will consider switching to other games with my friends. I hate to tell it, but it’s not the Blizzard quality of game design, what we now see in warlocks.
Im rerolling but not due to damage. Im rerolling as im already bored of the three button rotation of destro and i dont like affli and demo is just weird. U shouldve not listened to those people, stop caring what they think and find what you enjoy
when you get pure destroyed by fire mages and paladins you start to cry, my guild mates just destroy(double dps) me in mythic+, this is not a class design is just pure garbage from developers.
Nah. It’s you. Like all other negative nancies. Demo is more then fine. Awesome for torgast, awesome for mythic plus. Also demo makes me Friggin mobile. Demonic strength plus legion strike or what it’s called… Plus all demonic core procs. Mobility is awesome. Don’t listen to people tryin to demo with just pet and passive talents. They r lazy and bad.
I do need to switch to affl for raiding. Since demo falls far behind even with perfect rotation and talents.
