So I'm probably of the minority but I feel like warlock damage is in a pretty reasonable place right now. But that isn't to say that I don't think they need some major changes, although I'll admit my knowledge is mostly limited to destruction. And I'm going to preemptively say this before anybody else does, the "why don't you just reroll class/spec" response. I've put 611 hours to date into playing destruction in addition to spending about 150k gold on items in preparation for raiding, and I'm sure as shit not going to say "shucks, that's a dang tootin bummer, I guess I'll just reroll and I'm sure my raid leader will be fine with a last minute class change." And I suspect to many on here who have been playing warlocks since BC, that's just a tiny fraction of the amount of time they've spent playing their locks. I started in SoO, and I'm sure I don't have half the dedication and love for my class/spec as many of the people who post on here. So if all you've come in here to say is "just reroll" or "locks are just QQ because they're not top damage anymore," now is a great time to leave.
This is mostly for PVE, since I don't PVP much as I've found that currently the best PVP strat is to afk while a melee kills you hoping that maybe your team will pull through despite the handicap of having such a waste of space on their team.
This post is not about damage, as I'm of the opinion that destro damage is actually in a pretty acceptable spot. There are enough adds to cleave that there is plenty of room to shine, or at least perform to a reasonably high standard. There are enough destro locks pulling consistently high numbers that sadly, its probably a l2p issue if you're doing 16k dps and you're 640.
In the recent interview on Final Boss, the reasons for the recent destro nerf (and lets call it what it is, because it was a huge quality of life hit for a very marginal single target gain), were varied. First, they want certain specs to be good at certain things - multi-dotters shine in certain places, burst classes shine in others, etc etc. I don't particularly agree with this philosophy, I much prefer a philosophy that every class should have several options in their toolkit to shine in a large variety of situations and be able find a roll in each fight, so that each class has the potential to do good single target, good cleave, good aoe, etc. But it is what it is, and that isn't the end of the world as we know it. This philosophy is already proving to be pretty obnoxious though, because while some classes have niches (destro is solid on cleave, affliction and spriests on multidotting etc), others are doing consistently well on every single type of fight and have options in their toolkit that allow them to work well everywhere (looking at you monks, ret, and MM hunters). The main thing that I think is important here is consistency. I'd prefer every class to be like monks, ret, or mm, that does solid single target and solid cleave and solid aoe, but at the very least, don't make some classes only niche and others do well everywhere. At any rate, I digress. The other reason's that they gave were that they believed destro AoE was too strong and that they didn't want Rain of Fire to be part of our single target rotation. All of these are valid critiques.
Here's the problem though - destro is typically defined by its AoE, and so being changed from an AoE class to a cleave class (that is entirely dependent on low latency and high FPS) in the course of an unannounced hotfix is a pretty big gutshot. In addition, the current talent tiers for warlocks leave little to real gameplay choices and styles, and are pretty mediocre as a whole.
Tier 1: Two good choices that are situational and make for a solid choice, and one crappy one. Searing flames is pretty worthless right now though, while ember tap hasn't been adjusted for charred remains vs non charred remains talent choices and heals about as much as a used bandaid that's been floating in a pool for a week.
Solution: adjust embertap healing to provide a bigger heal for people not specced into charred remains.
Tier 2: One PVP option that pretty much never works in PVE and is worthless on a boss fight, another PVP option that could make for an interesting talent choice if it actually did what the tooltip said it did (provide an 11% heal, which appears not to be working in Highmaul), but that doesn't do what the tooltip says, and is again worthless in a PVE environment, and one extremely useful talent that can be used in a large variety of PVE situations. Now there is a tough choice that leads to interesting gameplay decisions if I ever saw one.
Solution: Fix mortal coil so that it actually does what the tooltip says it does. This is mostly a PVP oriented tree anyway, so we'll just accept its a bit of a throwaway for PVE.
Tier 3: Probably my favorite tier of the warlock talent tree. 3 different abilities that work very differently for a large variety of different damage types and situations. I think this one is great and needs no changes.
Tier 4: Another PVP option mixed with PVE. I get that PVP needs to have a talent tree with interesting abilities for them, but I wish blizzard would stop giving talents that have a purely PVP focus and quite literally will not be used in a raid under any situation. Burning rush and unbound will feel like an..odd... tradeoff for lack of better word.
Solution: Make burning rush baseline. Replace the talent with something else.
Tier 5: What is Grim Service? is that that one that you will never use under any circumstances despite being a class built around bursting during nuke phases? In addition to grim service, we have two passive talents, one which gives you a stronger demon and one that lets you eat your demon. Which seems cool in theory, but in reality it doesn't mean making an interesting playstyle choice, it means hopping on the forums and letting somebody who is better at math figure out which one is ahead, and then setting and forgetting.
Solution: get a bigger damage increase from grim sac, grim surv. Give cooler pet bonuses (either better things that your pets already do, like shorter cd on imp dispel or inturrupts, or abilities like demo's wrathguard bladestorm).
Tier 6: This one (I think) bothers me the most, because it's so close to being so good, and ends up being by far the worst.
AD - DS is not that strong as is as a major dps cooldown, and getting an extra 1-2 of them over the course of the fight isn't make or break. Still not a terrible talent choice, but not really that great either.
KJC - this talent is worthless with hunters having aspect of the fox. The vast majority of time spent moving in WoD is consistent short bursts of movement - "oh look a trap under my feet, 2 steps sideways and keep dpsing, too bad I missed 2 globals right there...and oh look it happened again 15 seconds later." Anytime there will be sustained raid movement for a few seconds, you can bet your ass there will be an aspect of the fox going out because those moments are few and far between, and when they happen healers typically need it.
Mannoroths Fury. Completely. and Utterly. Crap. With the 60% damage reduction nerf to rain of fire, coupled with the fact that it already hit like a wet noodle, coupled with the fact that it no longer generates embers, this talent is a loss in every single possible way.
Solution:
Buff the damage multiplier of DS when taking AD. Adjust overall numbers to compensate and make sure damage stays relatively consistent with where we are now.
Turn KJC into a charge system with a shorter cooldown. 15-20 second cooldown, can cast 2 spells on the move. reintroduce semi-mobility and allow the people who loved the playstyle of being able to move take a dps hit in exchange for mobility.
Remove Rain of fire from the game. Introduce mannoroths fury as a replacement ability, that does exactly the same thing as the old rain of fire did at the same damage level as the old one + ember generation. It'll be a part of single target rotation, but now destro will have a working AoE rather then a "cleave or gtfo."
Tier 7: Problems: I actually quite like DS and cata, but think cata is undertuned in a raid environment. Not sure what the solution is to making it not hit quite so hard in heroic dungeons and challenge modes, but it seems weird to me that a talent that is basically built for Koragh and bursting down the adds that spawn would be quite so far behind an ability that is designed to be purely single target (demonic surv). I'm finding my own damage to be 2k dps lower with cata then with DS. Moving on, I think charred remains is just that - the charred remains of something that used to be cool. What it actually turned into is a "stand and turret and hope you don't ever, ever, ever have to move." There are probably some people who play it better then me. But I'm equally sure that there are probably a huge number of people that hate the implementation of that talent as much as I do, and feel extremely frustrated feeling forced into it for AoE situations because of the RoF nerf.
Onward to the RoF nerf. I think it hurt a lot. Going from being an AoE class to a cleave class with no forwarning in an unannounced hotfix that relies heavily on low latency and high FPS was really a shitty thing to do. I know they didn't want it in the single target rotation, and felt like warlocks were doing too much AoE though.
Solution: Either remove it from the game and have mannoroths fury give you a talent that gives back the ember generating damage dealing version, or, if you're not doing that talent, fix it so that it will generate embers on 3 or 4+ targets and not effectively ruin our entire AoE rotation.
I think, with similar damage dealing numbers to where were at now, destro would be a bagillion times more fun to play. There would be a lot more interesting talent choices that actually make a difference in gameplay, and the spec in general would be a real treat in the decisions you get to make.
TLDR: blahblahblah, nothing is going to change for WoD because the class is in need of a total overhaul and that simply wont happen now that the expac has been released.
Anyway, I'd love to see some other locks thoughts on whether I'm being a whiny baby and should just get used to it, or if those changes sound generally like a step in a positive direction. I'd also love to hear from some affliction and demo locks as to their class ailments, because I like knowing that everybody else is suffering as much as I am.