I simple request better utility.
We have a self deprecating speed buff of 50% burning you alive.
Gateways with long cast times & long cooldowns, not to mention fixed locations.
Demonic portal with a long cooldown & 40 yd range.
They all kind of… suck.
You have monks with 2x roll in any direction with shorter cooldowns, warriors with 2x charge with shorter cooldown plus jumps, mages and the list goes on…
I feel like Warlock is overlooked for manoeuvrability or, at least they need a trade-off. The current “Tank” style of setup with soul leech is a bit lacklustre.
I feel like some of the casts need to be uninterruptable. I watch a mage cast all of their utility with zero cast times and drop an enemy in seconds… but for a warlock, you have a long cast on chaos bolt. incinerate, every pet summon, all your channels etc… then you get shafted with the worst movement buffs ever.
It’s just a much higher skill tier to play compared to pretty much every other class.
This is all in relation to PvP usability.
Having now levelled 5 characters to 80, the talent tree on warlock feels like the most unfriendly. First character I did was paladin, it feels like you have free reign on everything. Warlock feels very limited.
Grumble over <3
4 Likes
The tank style gameplay would have been ok. If our soul leech was not bugged and worked as intended, and it’s values was not nerfed for several xpacs in the row.
If soul link was not nerfed. Our tankyness is just a big number of our shields, that can be destroyed by the simple 1-2 gcds of melee or mages. Our every defensive ability is gutted by the healing reduction effects and dampening, and unlike rogues/mages/palas who has a blatant immunity we get more squishy with every second we fight on Arena.
We warlocks are not designed for retail wow, not by basic damage dealing mechanics - Imagine rogues or warriors or anyone else got their class resource like affli - chance to proc it from one ability.
The only way blizzard knows how to balance us is to buff our damage values. And it is so wrong, because if blizzard instead of buffing Grimoire Felguard damage from 60% of increased damage to 125% just cut his CD in half.
Instead of buffing damage of dreadstalkers blizzard should have made them instant and 50% faster or immune to slow or roots.
Instead off buffing Hand of Gul’dan damage blizz could buff the damage of Wild imps.
The point is that many who don’t play warlock think that “tanky” means having an advantage over others. Being tanky often leads to dying anyway in PvP because you can have all the damage mitigation you want, but if you can’t cast under pressure you end up losing.
Among other things, there is the enormous contradiction in which a class that cannot snare and root is plagued by cast time in order to produce damage, while a class that can always snare and root as well and escape with effective instant micro CC also does very instant damage or on the move. It should be just the opposite.
In any case, I’m fine with being a “tanky caster” and having to cast, but if a class has 10 mobility on a scale from 1 to 10, it’s not like ours necessarily has to have 3 mobility because “it’s tanky”, you can slightly increase mobility. Also because honestly a frost mage is much tankier than a warlock and yet has absurd mobility and continuous instant casts, as well as exaggerated damage in certain cases.
In this continuous chase between mages and melees in which the former is increasingly elusive and the latter must have more and more gap closers and micro CCs to try to catch him, we warlocks (and the shadow priests) are the ones who pay the price.
I would like to point out that the warlock destruction in MOP had much less armor than now, he had to choose between soul leech or dark pact but despite this it was effective and fun and in line with the current PvP of casters in 2024. So be less “tanky” if it comes compensated in another way is much better.
Among other things, having given ALL the warlock’s healing to the Demonic Healthstone was a disaster, while many were celebrating I was particularly worried. Drain Life is ridiculous, and the explanation they give for the fact that it is is even more ridiculous, namely that since it is an overkill spell it therefore needs to be nerfed. We agree that the spell for affliction with inevitable demise and soul rot was shocking, but there are still half measures or am I wrong?