Disregarding the recent undeserved nerfs to Warlock, there are still some core issues with the class in SoD:
The first one is threat. If the tank sucks or is undergeared by the time I put my dots up and cast one shadow bolt I have aggro. My friend is playing the Aggrend class, boomie, and was critting starfires for 9k in greens but never rips threat like that. I don’t understand why the good version of Soulshatter (90% threat reduction 2 minute cd 4% hp cost) wasn’t added as a core ability for the class that has no aggro reduction.
The second issue is rune swapping for aoe and single target. People don’t even do pull timers in SoD because classic content is so braindead easy. I don’t see any other class that has to stop to switch runes when they get to a boss or stay single target and do vanilla damage numbers in aoe.
mate, zirene hates warlocks. if you follow the warlock dicord, unwarranted nerfs and dont even get started on the blatant hate of destro locks. a huge proportion of people both play and want to play destro and all im seeing is " fire sucks you got to play SM ruin SM destro".
no i’ll play the spec i find fun thanks. personally i find it a disgusting attitude how firelocks are treated. the clear hate for fire and frost in kara crypts is evident. shadow offhand to work with a wand and a shadow specific ring. not a single item for fire locks or mages and nothing frost.
yet again another phase where everything gear wise and tier set bonus wise is being pushed towards making us play shadow. were not asking to be S tier classes but this clear hates towards certain specs is deflating at minimum.
the threat for me personally isnt an issue unless i start spamming SBV. but yeh apart from that trinket from naxx. no baseline ability for threat reduction is nothing short of a joke.
I wish I could post links, but you should google “SoD phase 7 rankings week 2” and browse the wowhead page. DPS warlocks were way ahead everybody. Like not even close.
As for rune swapping, most of the classes would actually want to do that to minmax. As a paladin tank, at certain phases of the game, I would even want to change my talent tree from aoe packs to single target. Warlocks, despite logs, aren’t the main characters
Can’t really say about threat, I’ve not come across the issue since I got my taunt rune.