I can't stand this iteration of warlocks

Classes Warlock
1

This is not a thread about numbers , overpowered abilities or who is viable in arena/bg/mythic/raid or whatever .
This is a simple rant over how the class feels to play from a warlock player who was played since vanilla.
And to put it simply :
It is clunky , boring and overall unenjoyable to play in all three specs .

Lets check Affliction .
My expectation was a dot spec with enfeeble potential , where I can run around and put dots on some enemies and drain their resources .
Maybe cast some fillers when the enemy is too strong or spam some seeds of corruption when there is aoe to be done .
Maybe some execute button at low level like showburn or something similar .
I would have different dots mostly instant cast that do good damage on their own .
And definitely some drains that drain life/mana/resources and enfeeble enemies .

Instead afflation is :
A bloat of useless dots that don’t do any damage .
Soul-shard combo point system for no reason .
Malefic rupture spam .
UA , Seed , Rupture based on those combo points .
UA limited to 1 target only
10x buffs that you need to apply and maintain so that your dots do any damage at all .
The whole spec is just an exel spreadsheet with tables for productivity . Disgusting .

So I tried Demonology :

From demonology i expected a master warlock using his pets to empower himself and sacrifice them in gruesome rituals .
Make weird bargains that increase his damage in return for some price later .
Crazy demonic powers that did tons of damage in cool visuals.
Metamorphosis …
Corrupting others with demonic powers .

Instead I got a stationary buff turret , which sits and summons tons of imps and I cant even see what damage I do because you guessed it , the caster does 0 Damage . I can’t even guess which spell is worth casting because my screen is filled with small numbers and I need an addon and sim to understand how to play this train wreck .
AI that does all the playing for me . I can literally spec into soul strike and AFK . During this time my felguard will clear anything that hits me .
Implosion completely useless .
At-least it was somewhat fun previous patches with succubus and instant dogs , weaving in procs of demonic core demon bolts . But of course that got nerfed too , so now I sit there and summon imps watching my felguard have fun for me .

Mind numbingly boring …

So I tried Destruction

I am not even sure what I expected here . Truth be told I never liked destro a lot .
I guess a simple caster with strong frontload damage that hit for BIG numbers and took some things from affly and demonology .
On demand AOE .
No combo points .
Instant casts that slap for good damage .
Strong cooldowns that buff the damage even more .
Maybe some dots / interactions with the demons that give you that extra skill level , and prevent you from falling asleep .

Instead I got :
10x modifiers that you need to stack to do damage
Soul shard Combo points . Fragments even which I have no way of seeing and i still don’t know how many fragments it takes to fill one soul shard .
Chaos bolt that hits like Incinerate
AOE that is based on those combo points .
Spamming a single spell 24/7 to fill those combo points only to spend them on equally uninteresting and noodle spells .

Boring and underwhelming .

Honestly I have never been this bored and underwhelmed by warlocks in the whole close to 15+ years playing . It feels like an afterthought of the other classes , where the devs decided to put together the worst parts of all other classes in one place , shake it , put a straw umbrella on it and say drink this .

You sit , cast and do 0 visible damage .
You get interrupted into your single school and sit afking at the screen .
You fill combo points 24/7 for them to do nothing , but just hinder your freedom of casting .
AI plays the game for you .
Useless cooldowns on abilities that do nothing , only to prevent you from playing a different rotation , or cater to some random spreadsheet , where someone said that " warlocks do too much damage luulz ".
The hell has warlock turned into . It is so unimaginative and boring .

I am trying to finish the story line , but whooo boy it is hard not to fall asleep , even though I’m playing with PvP on .
The trash , cringe story of boring friendliness does not help either .

Not even going to ask for warlocks to get reworked , because seriously , based on the last 3 expansions , it will probably turn out even worse .
I wander , is there anyone that actually enjoys playing warlock now , the once left are probably meta slaves of the BIG numbers , or just die hard fans that have invested way too much time into their character .

21 Likes
2

I’ve benched my warlock for this patch and I’m really hoping that warlocks (and hopefully monks) get a DH/rogue-tier rework by 10.2.7 or at the very least for the Fated season. I just don’t see why else would all three specs be left in their current dumpster fire states.

5 Likes
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Demonology of the classic/TBC/Wrath class fantasy wise better - you have summoned the demon you like - you empowered your demon - your demon empowered you providing the Demon specific benefits.

Right now you are tied to a Felguard - the game tries to present him as the strongest demon, where in the Lore Felguards are the basic foot soldiers that were used as cannon fodder like imps. Although imps were used as spies.
Right now the demonology description calls a demo a master summoner that controls the armies of the demons - but you can’t control the very basic wild imps from the HoG…

7 Likes
4

The answer is simple - we warlocks don’t have any class designer. All our changes comes as an afterthought of the other devs who don’t really cares about us.
This is why we have weak spells and talents that is not interesting, but the they have talents that increase damage of those boring and weak spells by 100%+ in order to make them useful from the numerical standpoint.

For fel sake we still have Doom as a talent, this is a testimony of how bad warlock class design is.

Nether portal is still badly programmed piece of code that haven’t been changed since BFA.

Demon customization broke Glyphed demon voice lines, their height.
For the most degenerate reason they took away our Observer as a main pet.

3 Likes
5

I immensely like the Affliction iteration in DF, it improves on the SL one which was already superb. Only downside is that u dont anymore have the Nightfae haste with good talents.

The destro iteration with cd reduction per soul shard on 10.1.7 was the best I ve seen yet. Now in 10.2 because of this talent changed it is worse. Before it was great.

Demonology, is just boring like it always was. Hate it since years but had to play it in SL e.g. Sylvanas and now becuase of numbers - if I would play it, atm I dont have motivation for it anymore

2 Likes
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The class designer argument isnt valid…

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Dragonflight warlock is basically an inferior version of how it was in s4 shadowlands. All 3 specs.

They need to revert to that version, and start improving from there.

At this moment warlock is just not good.

1 Like
8

you forgot to mention also that it takes 2x as long to cast.
Destro desperately need large changes and buff to make it fun to play again, the only spec that feels “okay” is demo as you mainly only need to upkeep doom brand.

4 Likes
9

To be honest, one of the reasons for this is because it’s guaranteed to crit.

Out of all the problems with warlock, chaos bold hitting kinda low is one of my lesser problems personally.

I just don’t think it’s that important for bolt to hit three times as hard as incinerate.

In fact i personally enjoy the more spammy chaos bolt that sometimes hits really hard with the correct setup.

More soul shard spent, more cdr on gwd, or at least how it used to be…

What they should have done:

Revert to s 4 shadowlands.

1: Main demon summons baseline.
2: Gwd reverted to being a dynamic cdr based on soul shard usage
3: Gwd in class tree
4: Soul fire insta cast, chance to reset on either immolate ticks or incinerate casts. One or the other.
5: Cataclysm in place of pyrogenics
6: Channel demonfire castable while moving and generates 1 soul shard fragment for each bolt fired.
7: malefic rapture dot extension
8: siphon life removal and haunt integrated into unstable affliction
9: Hand of doom
10: tyrant generates 1 soul shard every second rather than 5 at the start for better consistency, or even better, 1 demon core every 2 seconds during tyrant.
11: Crashing chaos should make your spenders cost 1 less soul shard and deal more damage after you casted a normal cost spender, throughout the duration of infernal.

Basically imagine: you cast full cost bolt or rain, the next bolt or rain costs 1 less shard and deal 50% more damage. This allows you to have more control over your casts while wasting less shards, and having a nice effect for the rotation, while the new crashing chaos was better for damage, it also removed a nice aspect of the old cost reduction crashing. So i wanna bring it back, but better, more controllable. This in combination with gwd in class tree, and being able to select rain of chaos would allow destro to have decent burst. Nothing too exceptional, just decent to good burst. And still have excellent sustained damage.

12: Madness back, but longer duration, removing was just a bad idea, bolt cast time it too long
13: darkglare should have a soul shard generation component.
14: i want instant hand of gul dan from the 1st dragonflight set back

I’m sure i have some more but for now this is all i can think about.

10

Better Darkglare’s damage adds additional stack of the agony on the target beyond normal amount.

11

Maybe, but i honestly don’t think agony stacks is a good mechanic personally.

12

One thing they desperatly need to do is change how destro’s 4p works.
Instead of making it a proc it should reduce it cd by 5/7,5 second for each shard you spend.
so in other words put GWD on rift as it is an actual good ability as it generates shards and give you room to move.

The biggest problem with the set currently is that you can overcapp on proc on pull and such as you have some ramp up time (immolate>trinket>CBdebuff which is roughly 3-5 seconds)

13

Oh yea i don’t like the current set either, but here i was talking about warlock in general.

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I’m probably alone in this, but i actually like current Demonology (My primary alt is a Demo lock), sure, i’d like demon-choice to be more flexible (Not just “Felguard or GTFO!”), and the recent “Inner demons”-nerf was uncalled for, but summoning bushels of demons is a really fun spec fantasy, we have several “Caster does all the damage”-specs already.

15

I really want to play warlock but demo is always too powerful and i really hate how that class works . metamorph was good and current demo is too stationary i totally agree.
I also think we should leave the manuel dot spreading in the past (this isn’t about demo it’sa general wow issue)

16

sod tank feels good

17

I think this post makes a really good point.

I usually play my lock as an alt (the theme is great) but recently it just feels like a bad version of every other class. In relation, when playing classic or wotlk, it is nice that not every class is a builder / spender class. It adds variety.

Unfortunately, I think that the developers can’t think of alternative ways to create classes anymore, other than the build / spend. Clearly some classes were hurt more than others when this catastrophic design decision was made and I believe that Warlock was one of them.

Also, as OP stated, spells which damage the warlock to gain access to temporary powers would be amazing. This was previously in the form of mana management before that system was scrapped. But I think this is the true essence of a warlock - a character that inflicts pain to self to gain demonic power and inflict to others, pure destruction.

2 Likes
18

Indeed. Proper demono. I play it as well in SoD.

My secret wish was that it would be meta / go to tank / super popular and that they would consider it for retail. Sadly it did not happen as it’s far from the most popular tank spec and they gated the rune pretty hard.

19

No its so stupid to let a cloth tank tbh.

3 Likes
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I used the free char boost on a Warlock lmao

Though I do like to play Demo, the afk-have-the-demon-clear-trash is convenient, especially when doing world Pve content.
As someone who hates WoW questing, Demo was made for me, I can just send out the Felguard while I collect the stuff.

Which I prefer to WW’s constant struggle to stay alive when confronted with 1 extra mob, or rogues.

And the dmg is pretty good.

I agree with the lore being an absolute cringe fest.
If it weren’t for Fyrakk constantly dissing and verbally humiliating Alextrasza & co I’d not have made it to the end of that Fairydust glitter campaign, cause that was hilarious.

1 Like