Warlock: The Death of a Class in WoW

[Deleted]

I don't have an issue with current numbers at all, I main affliction and do very well in my raid group as it. I do sometimes feel like I look good on the meters but not very good at actually dealing with the fight mechanics though, which I think is why there don't seem to be many affliction warlocks in top guilds even though they are doing well on warcraft logs. I also think EN is a very kind raid for destruction and affliction warlocks which play to their strengths. I think there are fewer fights in Nighthold where we will be good.

I feel like Blizzard just don't care about affliction. They've tried to make a big point with other classes and specs about not having dominant talents, yet we have soul effigy which is totally dominant and disliked by a lot of people. I wasn't expecting soul effigy to go away, but I was expecting to see a potentially viable alternative to it. Our second tier talents don't make sense now either, we have in that row Contagion which makes us do 12% increased damage to a target while unstable affliction is on it, in the same row we have empowered life tap which gives us 12% damage to everything for 15 seconds when we use life tap which we're using anyway. I don't know how anyone can look at that choice and think it could be equal, so either Blizzard employees aren't looking at it at all, or they are looking and don't care.

The new single target rotation in 7.1.5 is going to be maintaining 2 15 second dots and 1 18 second dot on 2 targets (with effigy), while maintaining another buff dot on yourself for 15 seconds and spending shards on UA. This seems pretty boring and horrible to me. It's possibly the worst iteration of affliction I've seen. I've come to the sad conclusion that things won't get better. Honestly I'd rather have seen more affliction changes in 7.1.5 even if I disagreed with them, at least I'd think they were trying.

Destruction has seen some work though, so I'd have some hope if I wanted to play that spec.

I wanted to main elemental shaman this expansion since I think they are a ton of fun just undertuned, they're actually getting some attention now so I'll be promoting that char to main if this is all we get.

[Aggressive]

damage isn't really the problem for lots of people

I think a GREAT majority of the player base just does not like how the class plays now. Even more I also believe alot of people are not knowing how to play the class very well in this expansion. Could be due to legendaries and the procs of them. But not sure.

I do know we can't tell everyone that L2P crap all the time. Not everyone that joins this game is in the elite club. And I highly doubt that even if Blizz continues to make specs hard like this to play that it would be good for the business of WoW. Think about it if people don't like how a game plays the leave and find something else. Every subscription lost = Money lost......Not a good business decision I would think.

[Xeranath]

As if people hate on effigy because they cant multidot? No1 has said that effigy sucks because its hard to multidot, its just a immobile piece of shit that in a raid enviorment forces you to play like a fucking retard when its a high movement fight. That ability is just a lazy mechanic from blizzards side, horrible game design.

And this is hard for, what, 2 fights in current content? No big deal. I'd like it, if cast on its target again, to reposition itself at your feet, but that's about all that needs to change.

[Deleted]

I know I was asking for a lot but I would have liked Siphon life/Demonic Circle/Writhe in Agony to be made baseline, maybe buffing the other 100 talents would've been nice.
They kind of need to rework the artifact traits as well and not make everything on death, maybe something like on soul shard gain.

EDIT: As someone else said, make effigy follow you around like a pet or something so it's not as annoying to use (Of course I would like it gone but that's not going to happen)

[Deleted]

I think a GREAT majority of the player base just does not like how the class plays now. Even more I also believe alot of people are not knowing how to play the class very well in this expansion. Could be due to legendaries and the procs of them. But not sure.

I do know we can't tell everyone that L2P crap all the time. Not everyone that joins this game is in the elite club. And I highly doubt that even if Blizz continues to make specs hard like this to play that it would be good for the business of WoW. Think about it if people don't like how a game plays the leave and find something else. Every subscription lost = Money lost......Not a good business decision I would think.

Well. Beforehand, i must specifiy that i'm not native english speaker (so excuse me for weird sentences). I play warlock since vanilla and I've cleaned EN 7/7 MM.

First, stop thinking you're good and the rest is not. i'm somewhere in the top 200 of many fights at EN without any legendaries that buff my dps. (i've got the pants and boots.) And i absolutely despise the warlock's state. We don't have any fucking SYNERGY between our spell and the gameplay has never been this boring and clunky. The fact is, our talents tree is SHIT, and you can't play ST and AOE without getting frustrated and competitive.

here's an example of destro gameplay : spam incinerate, refresh immolate and wait procs to cast ChaosBolt. Oh, use when max stacks or moving your charges of conflag and rifts. Waouuuuuh. where is my synergy ? I'm just litterally waiting shards proc to cast "the fun part" of the gameplay.

A contrary (and good) example of a great gameplay is mage fire. (I'm NOT talking about NUMBERS) I never felt so free while playing a class, and man it feels good to move and have some controls over our burst.

Why must warlock be chained ? We can't move, we can't really tank abilities (hello ToV 1 fail = 1 death, EN was badly tuned...) and even after hardcasting an ability, it doesn't feel great.

Then, since when we have to be good with a class to enjoy it ? I mean, you're making a mistake here. You really think blizzard is developping gameplay for the 2% people who will master the class ?! you must be kidding.
A good gameplay is somewhat an intuitive gameplay (but that allows players to master it) with great synergies. The majority of any kind of player should have a good feeling while playing a finished class/spec.

[Averrix]

I've played the class. I don't see any issues with it. What sorts of thing are people whining about? Personally I love destro and demo in their current "best" iterations. The only thing I dislike is Soul Effigy on affliction. Other than the class is great.

You obviously haven't played the class enough. Or you just started playing one this expansion and don't know how they were in the past. This is THE WORST time to ever be a warlock. They have screwed up this class SO BADLY. And now they want to take the only talents that really make destro any good and put them all on the same tier line. They might as well just delete the class from the game altogether.

- - - Updated - - -

I think a GREAT majority of the player base just does not like how the class plays now. Even more I also believe alot of people are not knowing how to play the class very well in this expansion. Could be due to legendaries and the procs of them. But not sure.

I do know we can't tell everyone that L2P crap all the time. Not everyone that joins this game is in the elite club. And I highly doubt that even if Blizz continues to make specs hard like this to play that it would be good for the business of WoW. Think about it if people don't like how a game plays the leave and find something else. Every subscription lost = Money lost......Not a good business decision I would think.

You tell that to the top warlocks that play the game who have been complaining about the state of the class since Alpha. It's bad right now.

[Irian]

Posts like these are always responded to with people posting logs....jesus christ people, at some point maybe you'll actually read what people are saying instead of spewing shit about raid statistics. Warlocks are unhappy because Legion's warlock design is the most unsatisfying, jarring dumpster fire of a revamp the game has ever seen. It was like a "corrupt-a-wish" for the entire class, where everything that players liked about warlocks (destro's build-up playstyle with huge chaos bolts, affliction's smooth rotation with a monstrous execute phase, demonology's...well, old demonology is literally gone) was downright ruined. Combine that with the fact that the class struggles horribly if you don't understand it and/or 850/860+ ilvl and of course people are frustrated with it.

If you enjoy the current playstyle of warlock then you either need to realize that you're very much a minority or you must be new to the class. I mained or at least played one to some degree in every patch since classic and I think the only time I saw it worse was after the great 12% nerf patch of Cataclysm, and at least then the class felt like the class I loved even if it wasn't strong. This new iteration doesn't even feel much like a warlock to me.

[Hctaz]

You obviously haven't played the class enough. Or you just started playing one this expansion and don't know how they were in the past. This is THE WORST time to ever be a warlock. They have screwed up this class SO BADLY. And now they want to take the only talents that really make destro any good and put them all on the same tier line. They might as well just delete the class from the game altogether.

I mean the situation prior to this I played mostly in Wrath/Cata. Warlock was my only alt I raided with during those times and I played him a lot. I liked the older design. I think I started to dislike the design in MoP honestly. I felt like destro was way too strong in the spaces it never used to be strong in. They could cast while moving in the beginning, chaos bolt hit waaaay too hard for the way havoc worked, the AoE ability that you cast AoE immolate, incinerate was waaay too power. Warlock was never meant to be an AoE class. It's just how the original design worked. I honestly don't think there is anything wrong with the class right now. I think it is exactly where they always wanted warlocks to be. The only problem is that in MoP and WoD they deviated from this plan in order to appease the masses and ended up disliking the way the class had become.

A lot of classes this expansion received overhauls in ways that can only be described as "Vanilla" to me. It seems like a lot of class fantasy was looked at from a vanilla perspective and then adjusted to match their original intent. Take survival and discipline for example. Survival in the earliest stages of vanilla was a failed mixture of traps and melee abilities. The goal for survival was supposed to be a spec that was versatile in either range or melee. Their big 31 talent point ability was lacerate which was a melee ability even. Discipline was supposed to be some sort of "battle priest" probably PvP focused. In Wrath it was nothing like the original design. In MoP it was similar to it's OG design but there was no trade off. Now, disc has the trade off of being the only "dps" healer for a slight reduction in throughput. They're now this versatile middle ground where if you need 4 and a half healers well.. you can get that sorta. Warlocks in vanilla were slow with poor AoE and a reliance on soul shards. Look at them now. Slow, poor AoE, reliance on soul shards. Seems to check out to me.

- - - Updated - - -

If you enjoy the current playstyle of warlock then you either need to realize that you're very much a minority or you must be new to the class. I mained or at least played one to some degree in every patch since classic and I think the only time I saw it worse was after the great 12% nerf patch of Cataclysm, and at least then the class felt like the class I loved even if it wasn't strong. This new iteration doesn't even feel much like a warlock to me.

See I don't know how you can say things like that at all. You say you've played since classic but you state that it's worse now than it was then. It's MILES better than classic-wrath in terms of versatility, raid utility, and movement options. The only reason it feels bad is because they removed all of the non-warlock things about the class that they added in MoP like really really easy, good, and consistent AoE, and mobility. Warlock was not a class designed in vanilla with mobility or AoE. It's how they want it. Frankly I enjoy it simply because they are not afraid to go back to their previous designs for the sake of making sure each class is different.

[Irian]

See I don't know how you can say things like that at all. You say you've played since classic but you state that it's worse now than it was then. It's MILES better than classic-wrath in terms of versatility, raid utility, and movement options. The only reason it feels bad is because they removed all of the non-warlock things about the class that they added in MoP like really really easy, good, and consistent AoE, and mobility. Warlock was not a class designed in vanilla with mobility or AoE. It's how they want it. Frankly I enjoy it simply because they are not afraid to go back to their previous designs for the sake of making sure each class is different.

Classic sure, but honestly, classic's hard to compare to because the game was drastically different back then. The game wasn't as focused or established as it is now and for what we were, warlocks had a lot of tricks no other class had. Sure damage wasn't good, but PvP was exceptional (we don't talk about rogues/hunters/warriors though) and soloing capability was borderline unmatched. I won't deny warlocks might've been worse off in classic but the game was so much less established that it didn't matter.
And then BC came around and well...that's when the game started to build a formula and we all know how warlocks were in BC.

What bothers the shit out of me about the class's design in Legion is how impractical and awkward it feels compared to pretty much any other class in the game. The damage is fine, in fact arguably even quite good now, but the class itself is a dysfunctional mess of half-finished ideas. Even visually we still have pre-Legion fire animations if not using Codex, and god knows how many other visual bugs that I won't list off related to green fire animations being mixed with orange fire and demonbolt applying a ground effect that can make it difficult to see the ground because it was designed for a spell much more seldom-used.

[LaserChild9]

they really dont care of the game any longer

They don't care about the game anymore? You know this game is called World of Warcraft right? Not World of Warlocks. Just because you aren't happy with your class does not blizzard has given up lol. Boohoo blizzard does not think that your particular opinion is superior to every player that does not play a warlock. Sure Warlocks aren't in great shape but someone has to be top and someone has to be bottom, we cant all be top, unfortunately Warlocks are closer to the bottom this expansion.

What exactly was the purpose of this thread? Why did you feel the need to advertise that you are quitting? Sorry if it seems harsh, but the game is probably better off without you in it if you're gonna complain like this is the end of the world.

[mhdoe]

Hopefully you take your crying post's with you

[Brohoof]

"Wahhh, boo-hoo things happened" Like these posts are really stupid and self-centered. If you decide to quit your class, that's fine. I am a warlock and I dont plan to change my class because I actually LIKE to play warlocks. I dont give a shit enough to stop playing if they do something really bad because Im not interested in playing flavor of the month classes, Ive had my warlock for years and plan to keep it that way. Sure im not happy with the class this expansion, sure they only really buffed us a little bit with that patch that buffed destro's spells 11% across the board (I dont remember when that was), There was the one change in 7.1.5 that I dont like and that's having to lose a ST Talent that I normally use, but im counting my blessings that we aren't nerfed harder than that.

[Zandalariprelate]

"Wahhh, boo-hoo things happened" Like these posts are really stupid and self-centered. If you decide to quit your class, that's fine. I am a warlock and I dont plan to change my class because I actually LIKE to play warlocks. I dont give a shit enough to stop playing if they do something really bad because Im not interested in playing flavor of the month classes, Ive had my warlock for years and plan to keep it that way. Sure im not happy with the class this expansion, sure they only really buffed us a little bit with that patch that buffed destro's spells 11% across the board (I dont remember when that was), There was the one change in 7.1.5 that I dont like and that's having to lose a ST Talent that I normally use, but im counting my blessings that we aren't nerfed harder than that.

Good for you that you are enjoying the class for me destro is the only one who is not boring or tedious and if they nerf more our single target because they fear wreak havoc i would roll to other class

[Deleted]

I mean is warlock even that bad? What is it that people are so upset about because the warlocks I talk to are pretty happy with the state of their class in terms of damage output.

its not the dps thats bad, its utterly awful gamemechanics. Soulshard, afflictions 2 dead traits on st bosses, demonology having to turret even harder than destruction in WoD and many many many more. It just feels bad playing a warlock right now.

[Teebone]

I'm getting some seeeeeeerious deja'vu from this post.

[Deleted]

I mean the situation prior to this I played mostly in Wrath/Cata. Warlock was my only alt I raided with during those times and I played him a lot. I liked the older design. I think I started to dislike the design in MoP honestly. I felt like destro was way too strong in the spaces it never used to be strong in. They could cast while moving in the beginning, chaos bolt hit waaaay too hard for the way havoc worked, the AoE ability that you cast AoE immolate, incinerate was waaay too power. Warlock was never meant to be an AoE class. It's just how the original design worked. I honestly don't think there is anything wrong with the class right now. I think it is exactly where they always wanted warlocks to be. The only problem is that in MoP and WoD they deviated from this plan in order to appease the masses and ended up disliking the way the class had become.

A lot of classes this expansion received overhauls in ways that can only be described as "Vanilla" to me. It seems like a lot of class fantasy was looked at from a vanilla perspective and then adjusted to match their original intent. Take survival and discipline for example. Survival in the earliest stages of vanilla was a failed mixture of traps and melee abilities. The goal for survival was supposed to be a spec that was versatile in either range or melee. Their big 31 talent point ability was lacerate which was a melee ability even. Discipline was supposed to be some sort of "battle priest" probably PvP focused. In Wrath it was nothing like the original design. In MoP it was similar to it's OG design but there was no trade off. Now, disc has the trade off of being the only "dps" healer for a slight reduction in throughput. They're now this versatile middle ground where if you need 4 and a half healers well.. you can get that sorta. Warlocks in vanilla were slow with poor AoE and a reliance on soul shards. Look at them now. Slow, poor AoE, reliance on soul shards. Seems to check out to me.

- - - Updated - - -



See I don't know how you can say things like that at all. You say you've played since classic but you state that it's worse now than it was then. It's MILES better than classic-wrath in terms of versatility, raid utility, and movement options. The only reason it feels bad is because they removed all of the non-warlock things about the class that they added in MoP like really really easy, good, and consistent AoE, and mobility. Warlock was not a class designed in vanilla with mobility or AoE. It's how they want it. Frankly I enjoy it simply because they are not afraid to go back to their previous designs for the sake of making sure each class is different.

that argument is so retarded i cant even comprehend. Lets make warlock the slowest class with no burst, shit aoe and no movement in a burst, movement, heavy aoe game like 2016 WoW , because warlocks were like that in 2004 right?. Srsly go shoot yourself in the foot.

You CANT compare vanilla to legion, its 2 completely different games and designs. Again the problems with warlocks are not numbers! Its retarded talent trees, bad mechanics and utterly aweful gameplay for all 3 specs!

[BannedForViews]

Like... this is log data from the last two weeks. Warlocks seem pretty good to me.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#

I mean they're better than a lot of other specs. All of their specs have fights that suite them more than the other ones. Running Demo/Destro is pretty easy and covers most situations unless you need to farm mythic plus in which case you really need to build up a second set. I don't see the issue really.

I really don't understand your doom and gloom whining. Looking at every single percentile you seem warlocks up very high with affliction and destro or demo is usually higher than most other specs as well. Looks like warlock is better than either druid dps spec.

That is not accurate. please stop posting that nonsense.

Look at them fight by fight.

Affliction:
nyth - 4th from bottom
eye = 5th from top (who cares it's all bs anyway)
spider - 5th from top
ursoc - bottom
dragons - top
cenarius - top
xavius - 2nd (most of this is again bullshit padding).

Also there are a VERY small sampling of affliction warlocks. These are almost all very good players. There aren't a ton of bads pulling the averages down.

- - - Updated - - -

Literally nothing is changing though except for a few talents getting buffed. I don't see any nerfs to the class at all so far unless I'm missing them. Yeah other classes are receiving buffs but warlock wasn't in a bad spot to begin with. It's like... frost dk is getting no changes aside from shitty talents getting buffed including the entire Breath of Sindragosa build but that won't affect the best build currently. I don't see any frost dks really complaining.

There are zero buffs in the ptr and a lot of pvp nerfs, as well as destro pve and pvp nerfs.

- - - Updated - - -

Bah, if it's pvp he's worried about, There a new talent that is going to make healerscry an ocean on the forums: deaths embrace. It's sooooo gonna get nerfed.

Unstable affliction, agony and corruption deal 100% more damage to targets under 30% health.

Combine that with Malefic grasp...and curse of shadows....

But as far as pve goes we're in a decent place. Tho I do enjoy raiding on my lock a lot more than doing mythic+s

Annoyed with people hating on effigy too. If you can't use effigy, you obviously can't multidot, in which case, Aff ain't for you.

Deaths Embrace is exactly what is wrong with everything having to do with pvp. We don't need more burst/execute skills in this game. It fucking ruins pvp. This is about the worst designed pvp this game has ever been.

- - - Updated - - -

They don't care about the game anymore? You know this game is called World of Warcraft right? Not World of Warlocks. Just because you aren't happy with your class does not blizzard has given up lol. Boohoo blizzard does not think that your particular opinion is superior to every player that does not play a warlock. Sure Warlocks aren't in great shape but someone has to be top and someone has to be bottom, we cant all be top, unfortunately Warlocks are closer to the bottom this expansion.

What exactly was the purpose of this thread? Why did you feel the need to advertise that you are quitting? Sorry if it seems harsh, but the game is probably better off without you in it if you're gonna complain like this is the end of the world.

The bolded part is completely false. Exactly why does anyone have to be top or bottom, and what does that even mean? Top DPS or bottom DPS? And by how much? If I'm bottom dps should I be bottom by 100%, or 10%? And why? You just make massively stupid generalizations and expect people to take your word that they are correct, which, they are not.

[Deleted]

Like... this is log data from the last two weeks. Warlocks seem pretty good to me.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#

Even tho I don't disagree with you that Warlocks are in an allright place from time to time, they do lack in certain areas.
The logs you linked include cleave fights, but if you look at Nythendra locks are dead bottom. I don't know, but Single Target isn't great and the burst that comes with the best Single Target spec is non-existant.

Locks shine on fights like Odyn, Dragons, Ursoc mythic, Cenarius and Xavius. On the rest they're not really bringing much to the table.

[Deleted]

I'm really curious what would happen if Blizzard rolled the destruction lock back to WoD or MOP style and then tuned it so that it does half the dps of any other class/spec. So many people are saying: "It's not about the numbers, it's just boring to play". Would it then be: "Yaay, finally I have fun playing my warlock, because the class mechanics are soo incredibly synergetic blah"? Probably not.

Destruction is a bit clunky to play and I would wish for a bit more mobility, especially out of combat, but I don't think it is as bad as people here make it out to be.
Demo is actually kind of fun to play. Sure, the empowering is clunky again, but the argument of "I can't move" is just wrong. It's all about good positioning and - you guessed it - a bit of luck.

Haven't played Affli enough to be able to make a well-founded argument. I just use it to do insane AOE dmg in trash fights

Only thing that is in fact frustrating is the lower-level dungeon content, because this by now is again literally "pull everything together and AOE", which is bad for the lock because
a) I always arrive a couple of seconds after everyone else because I don't have a movement speed increase (let's face it, in a movement speed vs. survivability decision, movement speed will always lose out)
b) I don't have the AOE burst that so many other classes have.

But: I can suffer through that as long as I'm OK in the harder content (mythic raiding & high m+)

- - - Updated - - -

Even tho I don't disagree with you that Warlocks are in an allright place from time to time, they do lack in certain areas.
The logs you linked include cleave fights, but if you look at Nythendra locks are dead bottom. I don't know, but Single Target isn't great and the burst that comes with the best Single Target spec is non-existant.

Locks shine on fights like Odyn, Dragons, Ursoc mythic, Cenarius and Xavius. On the rest they're not really bringing much to the table.

So what? Are you really advodating that locks are broken because they are not #1 in every single fight? That's a bit selfish of you, isn't it? In most non top 100 guilds, you will have a fixed raid setup and if locks shine on 4 out of 7 fights in EN, that pretty much guarantees them a spot.

Also, don't forget Helya where destruction lock also shines. Or Guam and Nyth where demo lock is always in the top part of the meters.

[Deleted]

BTW
What u see in those logs that affliction warlocks are "fine" only because you can stack souls from trash before boss pull which grants a huge advantage. The class and the spec very far from "fine" in the true world