Warlock gameplay feels dull

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

The SoD seems great so far however I find playing with the warlock class quite … boring.

Quick note, this is about personal gameplay experience as a feedback to the WoW SOD team. Every player’s experience can be different for sure and I would love to hear your opinions about it too.

The Affliction and the Demonology trees were underwhealming to use for lvl 25. It seems even worse for lvl 40 aswell. The runes only seems to synergize with the Fire destruction.

I tried to do dungeons/raid with different runes and builds on the first phase but most of the runes seems standalone without synergize options with the only exception of Fire with Incinerate / Lake of Fire etc.

On phase 2, it seems to go the same linear path mostly because of the destruction talent build I guess. What I would expect is to make the warlock class playable with different variants.

Forexample for the mage class, it seems very viable to play with the arcane talents (with the new arcane barrage rune), with the fire talent (new hot streak rune) or the frost talent (new frostfire rune). It seems that the mage runes are very well designed to make it viable to be able to play with all talents.
Similar samples with other classes that the runes synergizing or opt-ing to be able to play with all the different talents.

I am comparing the gameplay; the variegation of the warlock class and the impact of the runes to the class. Right now, even the iconic shadowbolt spell doesn’t seem to be viable to use. The warlock class gameplay seems to be stuck in the fire spec of the destruction talent and it feels bland.

Maybe it is too late for phase 2 (or not, I don’t know) but I would love to see runes that provide different and exciting ways to play the warlock class.

I only played with warlock, mage, hunter, shaman, paladin and some with rogue. It might be similar for some other classes aswell that I’ve not experienced but this is my personal feedback and gameplay experience.

4 Likes
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Are Warlocks really that bad off with their runes?
I played mine solely to be a tank and I just recently got it so I’ll be doing phase 2 as a tank going forward so I guess it won’t impact me too much but I’d love to hear more from an affliction/demonoligist perspective.

4

Well if the datamined runes are what Wowhead shows then yes warlock demo or affliction is gonna be super bad cause of lack of spells.
If u go Soul link then u do 0 dmg except spamin casting agony drain life and searing pain untill ur finger falls off.even then i dont think u can reach any1 with 20 yards spells and now slows or stuns.(talking about pvp)
untill lvl 50 warlock is in very bad spot in pvp …
But in pve i guess lock became a fire mage that spams fire spells with the worst synergy in the game “Lake of FIre” worst design imo.
Affliction in pvp might be good vs melee but vs range u lose to all.
Destro unplayable in pvp i think, or it might be the only way.
and Demo just a meat shield i guess.
But hang in there till lvl 50 ,the good stuff comes then.

3 Likes
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I got to thinking of the rune Everlasting Affliction and Chimera Shot for Hunters.

Both of them cause a single dot to refresh on the target however Chimera Shot is a new ability that does 100% weapon damage + 40% extra damage of the Stings damage on the target whereas Everlasting Affliction does… Nothing?

Is there something I’m missing when it comes to that rune?

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Yes just resets the dot, no extra dmg its kinda handy but incinerate is way better for pve.

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Ok so i played all specs (affli/ destro, demo does not exist in Classic, will change only when we get felguard rune in p5 i guess).

Affli is actually not THAT bad once you get high shadow power (120+). It is the best pvp and farming / lvling spec as well. The spec also plays the best but is high skillcap and haunt is amazing.
What it lacks is the massive flat fire damage increase that fire gets and no crit synergy. Everlasting affliction is nice but i wish it did reset the duration of all dots, not just corruption . Because is siphon life / UA coming this is just way too much dot monitoring / keys. New runes for affli are underwhelming. No flat damage increase and nothing to fight button bloat.

Destro on the other hand got everything: braindead / ez rotation, runes that give flat fat % dmg increase or 10% crit. The only clunky part is how awful lake of fire plays. It just breaks the flow of the rotation. The spec is also terrible for the open world (no regen) and unplayable in pvp (cast times).

Destro shadow volley: trash dies too fast to benefit from it. Will probably be great at 40man raiding though.

Tank spec can ( or could) go both ways, but at 40 it seems Fire destro is again the clear winner with all the crit and fire synergy, searing pain, ruin etc.
Shadowflame is also a destro spell getting benefits from the +5%crit talent.

2 Likes
9

My personal opinion -

To be honest, the runes for Warlocks have been terrible.

Belt:

Grimoire of Synergy - Recite from a dark tome, granting damage done by you or your summoned demon a 5% chance to increase the damage done by the other by 5% for 15 sec. Recitation lasts 30 min.
(Proc chance: 5%)

Invocation - Refreshing Corruption, Immolate, Curse of Agony, or Siphon Life when it has less than 6 seconds duration remaining will cause you to deal instant damage to the target equal to the spell’s remaining periodic damage.

Shadow and Flame - Your critical strikes with Fire and Shadow spells increase your Fire and Shadow damage done by 10% for 10 sec.

So out of the belt runes, we only have one viable option which is Shadow and Flame giving 10% increase in damage, yet we have another flat rate in same slot Grimoire of Synergy which is only 5% making it useless and then we have innovation which only does a flat damage within 5secs of said dot…yet void plague on SP does more damage per tick than the entire duration of corruption… So point is, there is only one rune to take out of those 3 regardless of spec.

Boots:

Dance of the Wicked - You and your demon pet gain dodge chance equal to your spell critical strike chance each time you deal a critical strike to an enemy, and also both regain 2% of maximum mana.

Demonic Knowledge - Increases your spell damage and healing by a value equal to 10% of your Demon pet’s total Stamina plus Intellect.

Shadowflame - Targets in a cone in front of the caster take (64 */ 100) Shadow damage and an additional (24 * 4 */ 100) Fire damage over 8 sec. This effect can be consumed with Conflagrate.

Again for the boot slot, we only have one viable option which is Demonic Knowledge which again is another flat rate damage increase. You may say we have Dance of the Wicked however since the hotfix, the 2% mana return is pointless and the dodge is based on the amount you crit, which is a bad design because if you crit again and its lower, it will refresh the buff with lower dodge because of the lower crit.

Shadowflame could’ve been good, but the damage is too poor and again, you’d take the flat damage increase because it impacts all damage and healing.

All we got this phase was flat rate runes and only 2 viable option runes and I have no idea how Blizzard are going to fix them considering majority is flat rate damage increase, no passion behind the design at all. Considering most abilities are from previous expansions, you could’ve given viable options for all 3 specs for both dps and tanking, Example: Hand of Gul’dan for demo spec!

Point is you could’ve atleast given us some new abilities rather than boring flat rate increase runes and yeah people will say next phase will be better…but I doubt it considering the fire runes are too strong and you can increase their damage output from talents from destruction…This makes it the only viable spec and I doubt this will even change at 60. Sorry for wall of text, just my personal opinion and thoughts. I love affliction and I am forced into destruction, just feels bad.

4 Likes
10

Talkin about Affliction in PvP
-Runes are terrible
-Damage is super low, especialy in this burst meta
-Mana issues are HUGE i cant cast all my dots on more than 1-2 ppl whithout spamin lifetap.

  • Buffs and Demon Form Cost waaay too much mana, everytime i die in stv if i cast my buffs i am oom.
    -Drain life rune is strong but if it gets resisted what happenes?u die! CD MUST be removed, the drawback having 100% more cost is enough! make it to be able to be active on only 1 target.
    Also why feign death dispells Drain life? its a dot! why?
    -Siphon LIfe? jesus useless and its a TALENT!
    -Shadowflame rune? ROFL

Warlock is disapointing man i play my priest dot whole enemy team in bgs and i am not even half mana and my lock i cant even dot 1-2 targets.

Locks need RUNES that changes his spells, buff them somehow or do smth! no need for more just buff his spells and reduce the mana cost.
Maybe a rune that makes locks dot tick every second or two as a buff for dps? i dunno smth!

3 Likes
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Classic group complain hoping for a buff for their (already OP) class which has the biggest oneshot in the game - 2.3 k deletes even tanks in pvp. 50 leeches, 4-5 dots, crits for 2.3 k on top of those.

Reality check: all classes have runes they don t use/are useless too

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Weren’t you quitting because Starsurge was nerfed? Go and cry some more about the Starsurge nerf because you wouldn’t be able to cast a Chaos Bolt to save your life in a PvP environment.

Reality check: you don’t get to have 4-5 dots and 50 leeches and crit 2.3k on top of those.

1 Like
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I reinstalled retail last night because I wanted to feel strong as a warlock for a few minutes again. Eventho retail is terrible.

Ph2 warlocks are so bad. Its sad… Why did Blizzard do us this dirty.

No fun runes. Just passives with some extra DMG. But we can’t even enjoy that DMG because hard casting spells in this meta is a death wish.

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I loved Dance of the wicked when it gave a lot of mana back. I still play it because the other options are trash. But it hurts inside.

My quick opinion:

  • Destro is great
  • Affli is dead (too mana intensive, weak dots 50% damage of SP dots)
  • Demo does not exist

My biggest gripe is the Metalock tank badly needed Immolation aura to be viable. At the moment there is 2 viable tanks: paladin and sham because of high threat, best aoe, great mana. The rest is terrible. That is only one class per faction.

Shadowflame damage for its mana cost should be increased by at least 100%. I do not play rogue but my understanding is that shuriken toss has the same issue.

2 Likes
15

I am not actually asking for a buff, what seems to be a trend with most classes is…Some runes are way better than the other runes in the same slot, I wish they give us runes to cater to different play styles and to the specs we have, but as it stands the runes you’d take as a dps is Lake of Fire, Incinerate, Demonic Knowledge, Shadow and Flame. If you take a good hard look at the other runes, they’re way under powered compared to these, which then forces you into destruction because you can buff fire even more with the talents. I am not speaking for everyone, but I am not asking for a buff…I am asking for Blizzard to make all runes viable and for everyone to enjoy the spec they most love, rather than being forced to play “one” spec and I don’t care if fire is the highest dps atm, so no I am not asking for a buff, I am asking for all specs to be viable with the runes we have…If you look at the expansions, all classes get some cool abilities and all I am seeing is watered down versions.

2 Likes