I wanted to bring up an ongoing issue regarding the Warlock’s viability in Mythic+ content in Dragonflight. At the moment, Warlock brings very little utility compared to other DPS classes, and this is becoming a real problem when forming M+ groups.
Our interrupt is on a 30-second cooldown, while most melee classes have a 12–15 sec CD.
Our AoE stun (Shadowfury) is on a 1-minute cooldown and has a cast time.
We have no group-wide buffs that are highly sought after, like Bloodlust .
We’re also not a meta DPS spec in terms of raw output.
With DKs and Boomkins being staples in almost every key—thanks to their strong utility, and great AoE/control—and with Disc Priests currently dominating the healer spot, that only leaves one DPS slot in most compositions. That spot almost always goes to a class that brings Bloodlust (Mage, Shaman, …).
So where does that leave the Warlock?
Suggested Solutions:
1.Give Warlocks some group utility like a form of Bloodlust or an equivalent unique buff.
2. Buff our damage significantly to compensate for the lack of utility.
3.Improve baseline utility—reduce interrupt CD, improve stun usability, or add a unique crowd control or group benefit.
At this point, Warlock feels like a dead slot in M+ unless something changes. I really hope Blizzard takes this seriously, because it’s discouraging to be benched just because the class brings nothing competitive to the table.
Thanks for reading, and I’d love to hear other Warlocks’ thoughts on this.
Some of the posts on both NA and EU forums suggest more utility for locks as well as our own toolkit.
Suggestions have been:
Shadowfury being an instant cast how it used to be
A form of haste buff like Dark Intent was
Our interrupt being on all our demon pets not just the felhunter so we can utilise their abilities (dispel, purge magic, sooth). There has also been calls for our core demons to have their abilities buffed. Imp used to provide a part buff.
Our health stones are good, we have a combat res, and demonic gateway, but you have to talent extra points to speed up these casts. Also, demonic gateway has an outdated 90 sec cooldown use which is why people say Warlocks are stuck in the past.
Totally agree with you. Warlocks are clearly lacking group utility compared to other classes, and all the suggestions you listed make a lot of sense.
Either we get back some meaningful group tools like instant Shadowfury, a haste buff like Dark Intent, or more useful demon pet abilities…
Or we should be compensated with a real damage buff to make up for the lack of utility.
Right now, we’re kind of stuck in between, with no clear identity or standout advantage.
I personally think utilising our pets more is a good start. We only use felhunter or felguard (if demo) in M+ because of the interrupt. If all our demons had the interrupt we could bring more utility with their spells.
Additionally, we need to use our curses more. That is another unique way to make Warlocks useful. Have our curses have a bigger impact. Bring back Impending Catastrophe so we can mass aoe curses.
This are just two ways we can bring utility by using what we already have or have had in the past.
Something you are not mentioning is that we arent that tanky, at least compared to classes like DK,SP and DH.
We have had nerf at every single expansion to our own survivability. Back in SL we may not have been meta but at least we could take hits then, now we cant.
We are also the only class that takes damage just to have a movement ability. And no im not counting demonic circle or gateway as they require setup.
What we would need is more utility via soul burn (we have been asking for this for now over 2-3 years)
We also need a return to our tankiness or some sort of raid buff. I personally would like to see us be able to give a flat 3% haste buff.
I also think one of our biggest problems is our class tree’s final nodes. They have no impact on our dps and if they do its minimal or have been nerfed back into void (soul conduit)
The whole ‘Warlocks are tanky’ notion went out the window a while ago. I completely agree with you.
Burning Rush is such a pain because you are literally killing yourself just avoid something that would, and most likely will kill you. Another poster mentioned about having it on a timer and then after that timer (i.e. 4 secs) it would start to drain your health. Not sure whether that would be op.
Soul Burn should be used a lot more and can be applied to a lot more spells. It is a talent they are wasting on silly things. We should be able to soul burn a soul stone to be instant.
The final capstone should be something like Kil’Jaeden’s Cunning. It should work by letting us cast our filler spells (incinerate, shadow bolt, and drain soul) on the move. That would not be op.
I do like the flat 3% haste buff idea. There are so many good suggestions. The problem I always see is elite players saying it’s a player issue. The game is, in theory, for everyone. Not MDI and RWF players.
The mechanics have moved on as to other classes so why can’t Warlock? Our talent tree has remained greatly untouched and we still have 2 point talent nodes restricting us.
The idea that Warlocks are still tanky is outdated. We’ve been slowly stripped of our survivability expansion after expansion. Burning Rush being our main movement tool while it drains our health is just punishing — especially when other classes get free, spammable mobility without trade-offs. A small grace period before it starts dealing damage would make a huge difference.
Soulburn has so much untapped potential. It used to be a flavorful and impactful mechanic — now it’s barely worth taking. The idea to apply it to things like Soulstone or expand its utility is exactly what we need.
And don’t even get me started on the talent tree. Two-point nodes still gating essential talents, capstones with minimal impact, and zero evolution while other classes are getting complete reworks. It’s frustrating.
The flat 3% Haste raid buff? Love it. Casting fillers while moving? That would feel amazing and make us competitive in high-movement fights again without being OP.
But at the end of the day, Blizzard needs to decide what Warlocks bring to the table. Either give us a truly essential group utility — like a form of Bloodlust, or some unique, impactful raid buff — or compensate with more damage to make up for the lack of utility.
Right now, we’re stuck in a weird limbo where we don’t really excel at anything, and that’s not fair to the class or its players.
We just want our class to be rewarding, fun, and viable — not something that only shines in perfect conditions or under the hands of world-first players. The game should be for everyone.
It is frustrating. There are a lot of existing spells that can be brought up to date that can bring us a quality of life, but we also need to be creative and introduce new spells.
Demonic Gateway’s to capital cities is something I would love to see. Not the main hubs but the dark areas of the city where the black market is.
Summon closet. Being able to summon the closet without needing an additional person but the act to summon requires one additional person. 3 people to summon the thing is outdated.
Our pets requiring a 6 seconds summon that costs a soul shard and require another ability to reduce the cast time. The soul shard cost should make it instant.
Many have made posts about this including myself. Others have suggested have M+ talents like you have with PvP talents. Warlock just needs a rework like it had in MoP. The class has just regressed since then.
I would argue that this is something they should not give us, if they give us damage then we are 100% guaranteed to be set to be super weak during the start of every season thanks to world first race.
If we have one of the top dps every patch, mythic raiders would just stack warlocks to max out the dps.
I think this is HIGHLY dependant on where you are in terms of key pushers , Sure if you are trying to push the very top limit of keys, Then you do need every advantage you can get to achieve this.
As for myself I would rather take an experienced player of a non-meta class than someone whose rerolled FOTM just because they are currently good. Example I would trust my druid tank friend over another friend i have who rolled a demon hunter tank but has no clue how to play it effectively.
People talk about the “meta” classes as if they require no skill to play and just turn you into Godmode and you can easily steamroll everything but people forget that even the “meta” classes you need to be able to play proficiently with them to perform else you may have been better sticking with your off-meta class that y ou know how to play better.
I play Aff lock and do about 2-3m overall (Ofc overall is very dependant on the size of pulls etc) which for the content im doing is more than enough. (I only do 10-13,s atm because going for Undepletable)
