Warlock is currently one of the worst classes in the game, primarily due to a combination of longstanding issues that have not been adequately addressed. These include poor mobility, long and easily interruptible cast times, a lack of new or relevant utility, and an overall outdated toolkit that has not evolved in line with other classes. Over the past several expansions, Warlocks have gradually lost many of their iconic abilities without receiving meaningful replacements or compensation. They removed meta,portal,cunning,hellfire and more. Meanwhile, other classes have been significantly modernized and empowered with new mechanics, mobility options, and impactful group utility, making the disparity more noticeable. While Warlocks may still perform competitively in certain scenarios, the class often feels clunky and punishing to play in content that demands high mobility and reactivity, such as Mythic+ and PvP. The current design heavily relies on standing still to cast long spells, which feels increasingly out of place in today’s fast-paced game environment. I believe Warlocks are in need of a more comprehensive review, not just number tuning, but real mechanical and thematic updates that reflect the evolving design philosophy of the game. It’s disheartening to see that such a conceptually rich and iconic class as the Warlock has become increasingly difficult to enjoy in its current state. It seems to fall further behind with each passing expansion, becoming progressively more plain, less engaging, and lacking the depth that once made it stand out. Sad.
No they’re not. Warlocks are pretty good, in both PvP and PvE aspect, you probably haven’t met a good one, or any good at the class yourself.
Every class is good, you just need to find the groove for it, it’s a reason why locks are in RWF, or even in many top ladders in PvP. So I totaly disagree with your point. But it seems to me, this is a personal opinion, and sure, you got your views, I got mine, rest got theirs.
i completely agree with you.
i tried to play with it and i must say its very bad in pvp.
its just standing there ready to get heavy hits from every class.
not good healing.
not fast stuns and damage spells.
its only a fear.
Yes, thats why i feel like cripple compared to mage in pvp. Class is just
miserable compared to other casters. It brings nothing unique, despite being a target in all comps and trying to survive.
Considering that we have 3 specs and that two are extremely niche gimmicky and one is totally trash (demonology) , yea .
I have honestly seen 2 demonology warlocks the entire expansion in battlegrounds or dungeons total . And maybe about 10 total of the other specs .I hardly meat any warlocks at all anywhere for me to learn from ( so sorry guy above , who said you just need to meet good players , there are none . Even bad players are not playing warlocks .)
No one plays it , meanwhile everything swarms with warriors , paladins and hunters .
I had an unpleasant encounter with a paladin today and realized that nothing I do , can help me win as demonology . I have less defense cooldowns , They are worse , take more damage and do less healing , all the mean time I am stationary practice dummy .
At one time I got caught with no cooldowns , in a 4 seconds stun and he took me down from 100 to 0 . Impossible to kite , impossible to do anything , because they have the audacity to just pop immunity and rape you in the 5 seconds it lasts with range dps . I mean why save it anyway , he can out heal my dps by popping world of glory every 20 seconds .
Remember the paladin kill window was 4 seconds .
As demonology I need
3x 1.6 sek shadowbolt
1x 1.6 dogs
1x 1.6 charhound
1x global cd for felguard
1x1.6 Tyrant
Which equals to a little over 10 seconds , free uninterrupted casting for me, to even start doing any dps , and another 10 before all the above even deals its damage . (spoiler alert , this full “burst” will not even deal 50% of the paladins health btw)
So 20 seconds
And he can kill me in 4 seconds.
Fair play right ?
And on top of that all , he can just bubble away and ignore everything entirely , Not even going to talk about interrupt , aoe stun my pets or just plain kite me around a pillar until my pets die and heal up .
At which point I’m back to casting 1.6 sec shadow bolts for 100k damage , while taking 3 million dps per seconds .
Don’t know if you have been around for long , but let me tell you this .
Blizzard hates warlocks since the end of Pandaria (peak warlock design), when they had internal quarrel and fired the warlock developer . At one point in WoD Ion even said quote : " We’d rather you did not play demonology" .
He is still lead designer and we are still eating it up thanks to him .
Since than the class has been going downhill non stop .
Although for the sake of argument . Blizzard hates casters overall . One of them said they can’t even imagine how people play them , so the design direction has been to turn casters into mele with instant range spells .
You can see this extremely well in the way of elemental shamans , frost mages , fire mages , arcane mages .
I think this is extremely disgusting and boring design , made for apes that like to just smash buttons and pew pew , but alas they show no sign of turning away from that . For a real caster vs mele gameplay you would actually have to clamp down on gap closers / instant cc /instant spells / endless healing ,
But we can’t very well let Jimmy get a seizure when he logs on his character and realizes he doesn’t have 120% up time on his target , doing 12 million damage in 4 seconds , now can we .
Oh and btw for the popular argument about " but it is not balanced around 1v1 duels" I say a censored expression .
Warriors , hunters , mages, paladins , rogues have 0 problems fighting 1v1 , but other classes suck it big time , because reasons . And the reasons are that these classes are allowed to have everything x2 in their toolkit , while some other classes have a something called a “Class Identity” … Which apparently is very important , but as useful in a fight as singing .
Sure it sets the mood while you get your behind kicked , but it really wont help you win , and if anything just makes you a desired target for future entrainment .
Rogues disagrees with you
Wtb class change service
I genuinely hope that the ongoing concerns voiced by long-time Warlock players many of whom are simply exhausted from years of being overlooked, would be finally heard and acknowledged by Blizzard. The issues with the class are not new, and it’s clear that many players feel ignored despite consistently raising valid feedback. At this point, the only option left seems is persistent and vocal whining regularly in the hope that they won’t continue to be dismissed or deprioritized. Unfortunately, past patterns shows how they are leaving the class in an even worse state with each expansion.
Class identity needs to remain, and I don’t feel like all classes need to have the movement of a windwalker monk tbh.
Also, can we start banning these Chatgpt users. I’m sick to death of interacting with AI.
My language skills are not the best so I’m using ai to correct it and i see no problem with it. You are talking about original class identity but such thing is long gone due to all changes we saw during past years. Each class should adapt to new play style environment and warlock plays like it did in vanilla which is absolutely ridiculous. Just look at mages that used to be fragile casters and now they are hundred times harder to kill them warlocks ( Tanky casters unable to move, casting chaos bolt that does half of one hunters uninterruptible shot damage)
I’m not even disagreeing. I do think warlock needs some changes, but I also understand a lot of the changes that would be super good for PvE would have a gigantic negative effect on PvP.
For example, I think Shadowfury should be instant cast. When standing for more than 2 seconds your next 2-3 abilities should be able to be cast while moving. I also think that curses should auto apply when using immolate/corruption.
As for the cast speed of chaos bolt. Yeah, the cast length feels slow and clunky, and honestly I enjoyed destruction a lot more in earlier iterations (Wotlk) where chaos bolt had quite a fast cast speed.
Also bring back the version of soulswap from cataclysm where you can grab all your dots from ST and spread them by spamming soulswap on different targets. That FELT really fun and made affliction feel buttery smooth.
Right now warlock feels like it’s got a permanent anchor attached to it’s foot, and it doesn’t feel all that great, even with semi-okay gear.
I would like to see malefic grasp becoming a choice node with malefic rapture.and for it to have the old cunning effect where you can channel it while moving.
Grasp could be single target sustain DMG while rapture can be multi target burst DMG
Yep. MoP made casters feel great. Especially warlock.
Think you mean Kiljaeden’s cunning though. Cunning of cruel was the sexy trinket from cata. Which was also really cool.
Yes I just can never remember how to write that name which is funny cause I was on that server for half my wow time
It is evoker.
Nah we are kinda stuck in time.
We still play like these strong unkillable tower class that can’t move while the rest of the classes evolved with the game
I think most classes should be more like Warlock, not Warlock more like other classes. It’s good to design mobility consciously and not just give everyone spam mobility. It’s not modern to just make the game spammy and unorderly. Pvp has died off in wow, so the general, common class design direction is not a good aspiration for the warlocks
It’s not about getting spammy and speed around.
It’s about about getting some mobility in a fight.
That’s why I proposed something like getting the choice between rapture and grasp with killjeadens cunning.
Then you would have a choice to get some mobility but you would sacrifice burst DMG and multi target DMG.
And even so we have circle and gate I would like to see a talent that lets you use the burning feed (forgot the name) without taking DMG as long as you don’t take DMG.
Then it could be used for farming old raids and stuff like that
Portal, curse of exhaustion, burning rush, 2 fears on different cooldowns, mortal coil, an interrupt, pushback-immunity cooldown, and teleport should be enough to deal with mobs.
I’m very much against designing classes around oneshotting old raids… Man, I think so many people don’t even wanna play a videogame anymore. At this rate, the best choice is to just release wow 2…
Oh boy sometimes I think you want to misunderstand other people.
I specifically talked about fluidity in a fight that’s why I used afflictions spender ability as an example.
It’s not about movement abilities and it’s double not about cc abilities that you named for some reason.
And being able to farm and one shot old raids was always a thing in wow.
You act like that is some new thing that just changed.