Warlock as a class stand in the very bad spot right now. There is too many issues in class design, class implementation, class itteration, spec itteration and peole that stand behind all warlock changes.
To understand what is wrong first we need to identify these issues, it is:
- Dev team vision of the warlock.
- Class toolkit that was implemented.
- Destro.
- Bad reputation.
- Casuals
First problem - the vision that blizzard tries to push over warlocks.
To be more simplistic, the idea that blizzard tries to sell - the tanky caster that can take huge amount of damage and deals equaly huge amunt of damage is good on paper. But this idea is not working because all other specs in game (with some minor exeptions) have more reliable desing that works in current game engine and works better in the current game flow. Warlocks simply just feels extremely outdated in damage dealing mechanics, and how blizz treats warlock damage dealing mechanics. For example - one of the demo’s main sources of damage is demons, their main role is to do damage and this damage is somewhat simmilar to some mediocore DoT damage of other classes, and blizzard treats demons in such way - like demons are just DoT’s. But they are not DoTs, they are NPC that we summon to deal damage. Unlike DoT’s demons could be lost behind line of sight, CCed, or simply killed. None of our nonmain demons are bring something else on the table exept raw damage. While other classes have spells with additional usefull effects.
Second problem - Class toolkit. Why warlocks was strong Pre Legion? The answer is simple, they had relliable toolkit that was designed to be compedetive in every game encouther, no matter PvE it is or PvP.
Right now, this tanky caster toolkit works only in leveling and raids, and still it designed so badly that many M+ players are not willing to take warlocks in the groups, and there several reasons for that but we talk later about that. In PvP only destro is actualy capable to be 100% of the time compedetive. While Demo and especialy affli has some horrible desing and tech problems that Blizzard decided not to solve before next Xpac (And just for the record, today 3 june of 2020 on SL Alpha test changes that blizzard did to demo is small, insignificant and just bad).
Blizzard’s design of tanky and imobile caster doesn’t work for many diffirent reasons…for example if Warlock won’t pick up Demon skin then you won’t be able to start combat with pre build shields, and this will lead a very dire situation in combat, because baseline soul leech generates shield only 8% of your and your demon Single Target Damage. While classes like Hunters, DH have acces to the leech that grants them by their pets or their spells that will heal them from any damage they deal. And for Demo soul leech won’t generate shields because Felguard - the demon that blizz forces on demo has Felstorm as special skill - an AoE ability, and a talent version of that ability that will deal 400% of felstorm damage…but guess what, you won’t have shields from that.
Other problem is that we have only one one talent choice that improves our survivability in meaningful way. This is Demon skin and Dark pact, but both of these talents are on the same row. Additionaly all our azerite traits that suppose to buff our survivability is garbage. One that increases amount of healing from drain life, when our health is criticaly low, and we are near execute phase of many specs and reaping flames? The other that gives our some absorbtion shield when our fear is active.
Destro - destro is a problem because Devs desing all warlock toolkit around Destro. Our CC is made so destro could easily execute Chaos bolt chains and deal with the enemy, while Demo and Affli are unable to use CC at same level of efficiency as destro. Both Affli and Demo require way longer ramp up phase, and that phase leaves them in exposed to the all kind of CC and interupts, while destro could easily rain CB and gain resources while Infernal deals massive ammounts of damage to the enemies. And this is looks strange, because Destro summons Infernal who not only deals same amount of damage as Tyrant to the single target, but also deals massive AoE damage, stuns the target and generates resources for the destro… while tyrant damage in baseline is practicaly non existant, he needs to be summoned while you have a lots of imps in order to buff them or use them if you have demonic consumption talent. Tyrant requires a full preparation before he sould be summoned, while destro is able to start his things on the fly.
Bad reputation… this is triky part. First, at the start of the BFA all big WoW influincers like Method and the others told their viewers that warlocks was in bad shape, this lead to the rejection of Warlocks from the community. In the Beggining of BFA when M+ was open, it was hard to get in dungeons because of all of bad rep that surrounded warlocks, and Blizzard did nothing to fix that. Not only warlocks was in bad shape, but people found more and more bugs that ruined Warlocks, look at Inner demons or Nether portal as example, when demons that you could summon had 110 level while you was 120. And blizzard didn’t fixed that for good amount of time. Before came explosive potential, community didn’t thought about demo in M+, and now, take it away and no one will bring Demo for high M+ key. Affli in the other hand could be usefull in high M+ keys, but because it practicaly useles in low keys, people don’t seems to want to see any Affliction warlock in their party.
Casuals…what i could say about that… Because they create a warlock look at all “cool” effects, armies of imps, big Chaosbolts they puke raimbows and screams how cool warlocks are…exept these casuals will never bring warlock to M+ or Arena where warlock desing falls apart. And sadly blizzard points on these people and uses them as an excuse not to fix warlocks.