Why do so few people play locks?

[Super Kami Dende]

I think it is mostly just constant changes, Other Classes suiting people better and being pure DPS specs.

It's not like their Specs are bad, they still out perform other classes that I still see taken often. I think people just didn't like a lot of the changes.

That and literally 90% of the Warlocks I know that mained it for years changed to either Demon Hunter or Shadow Priest this Expansion, as both of their "fel/shadowy" themes were better than the Warlocks.

I mean to be fair, less people play Shaman, DH and Monk and with 12 Classes in Game, A perfectly even distribution would be 8.3% population per Class and Warlock is at 7.5%. When you realise hunter itself is nearly at 12% but most others are hovering around "even" numbers. Warlocks aren't actually that underrepresented as a whole.

[Eviltroll]

It's just very slow for me. No movement speed stuff, slow casts, everything is slow and boring. Not to mention the extremely outdated multidotting by targeting each enemy individually.

I'm not sure if this is trolling or not...I have a feelig it's not, wich is so sad, no wonder this game has become what it is today......

[slickwilly]

So I'm a casual player who pug my weekly heroics and i do notice that locks are rather unpopular as a class.(Can never find them to summon the rest of the group in lfg queue, mostly hunters, dhs and others). WoW class demographic sites have confirmed that they are rather few. So why is that the case? I mean they have been top dogs since nighthold dps wise, and it's still the case even with recent nerf. Not to mention that affliction has a rather pleasant and predictable rotation. So I'm really curious as to why so few people play them.

Your information is bad. Look at warcraft logs and you'll see warlocks are a very popular class. Count the parses.

[Deleted]

Because why play a warlock when you can play something more exciting like a mage

[gushDH]

I'm not sure if this is trolling or not...I have a feelig it's not, wich is so sad, no wonder this game has become what it is today......

Way to contribute to the thread. By not adding anything to it.

[Verazh]

I have mained my warlock since vanilla.

Never before have I been this close to rerolling. The only thing that is stopping me is that we have no other locks in my guild, and so we'd be missing healthstones and summons. My guildmates have even begun jokingly and lovingly calling me Summonstone as a nickname. Sure I do decent dps, but its incredibly boring/non-engaging.
Here, in random order, are my issues with the class:

1) Only affliction is truely viable, and it is extremely boring. Boring rotation, bad aoe, no burst, boring visuals.
2) Destruction is underpowered and also sort of clunky.
3) Demo is a huuuge clusterfuck of a spec. I wont even go into how unpleasent it is to play, but also incredibly stationary. Any movement kills the rotation and thus the dps.
4) The spec with the most survivability (aff) also is the only spec with a buffed healthstone.
5) Only viable pet talent (tier 6) is supremacy, so we wont ever use our Imp or our Felhunter, and we wont ever have the option to not have a pet but saccing them.
6) Succubus, Imp, Felhunter and voidwalker are hardly used by anyone. Wasted abilities.

Atm Im just biding my time for when we get a new warlock, then Im going DK. Something major needs to change in BfA before I would consider it as a main again, eventhough I love the theme and the aesthetics of the class.

[Nevrex]

My lock used to be my main since I started playing back in Wotlk. I liked all the cool abilities and lore. Also the specs felt really fun.

In WoD I already started to play my alts a bit more than usual, mainly because I didn't like that ember talent we had to use for destruction.
In legion with all the shards and the complete change to demo, I don't enjoy it anymore. I use him for world quests and LFR.

From a class that had a variety of spells on short cds, good healing and passive survivability, we turned into a 3 button specs (not demo) with low healing and cds for survival.

Pretty much all of our cc and defensive abilites were turned into talents, so you have to choose. And ofc they are nerfed as well.
It feels like they are still punishing us for being good in mop.


Anyway, when I didn't enjoy him at the start of the expansion, I leveled my druid and dk to level 110 and damn it feels so much better.
Not sure if it's because they are melee but I do less and gain more compared to my lock.
While it's fun running around dotting everything and staying alive with the warlock, on my 2 melee characters it's so much easier and rewarding.

So yeah, if demo and destro stay the same in the next expansion, I don't see a reason to level him this time.

[Inci]

While many people might find warlocks boring, I'm honestly having a blast. I've been playing a warlock for over a decade competitively and casually.

Maybe I'm too attached.

[sam86]

because u competing slot with mage, a class that is one of most famous iconic in fantasy genre, and they have BL and u don't

[Deleted]

It's one of my main alts that I play but I'm sure it's because:

A) It has no tank or heal spec... so why not just play priest and take advantage of healing queues
B) Afflic (top raid spec) ramp up time is frustrating when doing world content or low level mythics. Like literally useless when farming sub +10's where warriors just bladestorm + cleave everything in seconds

Very fun for raiding and progress mythics though

Affli useless when farming world content? You're making it obvious you've not gotten anywhere in the game. Affliction is probably the most broken class in the game for world content. They can solo everything in the world, even world bosses. They can even solo normal legion raids, maybe even HC EN. Haven't tried.
You can litterally play with Sacrolash and Absolute corruption and do 5 million + damage by only applying corruption to mobs when doing WQ's and invasions.

Warlocks are also extremely broken in low m+ dungeons. Just double seed, agony on 2-3 of the seeded mobs and start spamming seed.
You do easy 2.5+ million total in low m+ in half decent gear.

[Deleted]

Warlocks have always been one of the least played class despite being one of the best classes most of the time.
I have played a lock since late vanilla and it has been my main up until 2-3 months into Legion where I just got sick of being weak at the start of the expansion (as it also was the case in WoD). That, combined with how the specs currently work, especially demonology that has always been that weird ass spec to play which got even more stupid have WotLK.

Now, after 1 year of DH I have returned to the lock and I actually regret switching to DH, especially the prestige farm.

Right now the underrepresentation I believe it's because of how weird the specs are. Affliction and Demonology at least had better days.

[Austilias]

That and literally 90% of the Warlocks I know that mained it for years changed to either Demon Hunter or Shadow Priest this Expansion, as both of their "fel/shadowy" themes were better than the Warlocks.

Hopefully the new animations fix this.

[Deleted]

I guess you haven't really played some class like a hunter, a mage, a druid or a rogue. Then you would know what actual movement speed stuff feel like. The portal, everyone gets it. Burning rush: costs hp and is a 50% move speed. That's like the bare minimum.

When you play affliction you never turn off Burning Rush, litterally. Maybe in some rare instances in Mythic Antorus.

[Shandalar]

Affli is boring

Destro is rng and underperforming

Demon is broken.

And thats all.

[Koloss]

Well, i'm a wrath-baby or whatever they call it and i remember it always being the case, so i don't think it has much to do with the current state of its 3 specs. The only less represented class was Monk and sometimes Rogue was close also i think. And it can be that many people got attached to their old main's class, not everyone is a fotm reroller.

Not sure what's the main reason behind it tho, in Wrath the raider locks were kinda looked like elite guys over the mages who spammed Arcane Blast and i knew many people who didn't like to play any of the specs as they were more complicated or they simply were disgusted by the dotty rotations. But since then classes got much closer to each other in complacation i guess. Also many people seemed to hate them in PvP when they encountered them so i suppose this made them not to consider trying one (always talked about fear-spam warlocks and never poly-spam mages :d). Plus many people likes the "i'm a good guy" kind of RP which i never understood, i always prefered to be the cool kid and play something more evil. People also don't like to control pets, or if they especially do like it they roll a Huntard.

But actually looking at Heroic logs it seems Affliction is the 2nd most represented DPS spec in Antorus after Havoc. Which i find odd as i do not encounter many other Warlocks as well. Possibly it's class that have a higher Main/Alt ratio than other classes (i mean not many people play them as alts and many of the mains play with their guilds). Ofc there are more Mages and Hunters summmarized as they play 2 specs mostly, but i expected bigger differences (~50k lock, ~55k mage and ~60k hunter logs (oh i kept it at 75th percentile logs but it shouldn't change the ratio)).

[Deleted]

Hey there bud, let me introduce you to... http://www.wowhead.com/spell=111400/burning-rush

Also there's the amazing http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48018/demonic-circle

Wow yeah, awesome movement burning rush when you change speed for 4% hp each tick, and circle with 30 sec. cd, after this no melee will destroy you.

[BadguyNotBadGuy]

I used to main Lock for most of my wow time, however in Legion all three specs are boring to me, so id rather mess around with other classes and specs. though i do wish they fix them in the next expo, to be less monotonous

[Growel]

Leveling my warlock from 100 to 110 (recently) was really fun. I'd DOT up about 3-5 mobs, and watch them all flail helplessly against my minion, as they all died.

[Deleted]

My god i do not agree with most of what I read…I think it is all about personnel preference…

I main Warlock since 2005 (often demo but I’ve played all specs depending on the expansion and I started Legion Démo, went destru and finally Aff)
And….

- I choose Warlock BECAUSE DPS ramping was slow and insidious (no big numbers)
- Dot management IS fun (personal opinion of course) but I mourn the loss of snapshotting
- Life tap IS core to the warlock, exchanging life for power IS fun and is perfectly synergical (?) with drain life (Healer's mana WILL be yours)
- I appreciate being Extra usefull on hard contents and sub par on trivial content (I is like “you do not need my power for lowbies tasks")
- I LOVE pet micro management (I read alot, "warlock does not have interrupt" ??? allo ? BIS aff talent choice include supremacy and felguard has a cut every 24sec….or infernal with zone stun every 1 min)
- I prefer playing a class less played that a FOTM
- I hated end MOP destru Warlock, we were walking killing machines totally OP with no weak point, top AOE, top Single, no completion, top mobility (I recognize that KjC was fun but it did not match class fantasy) this situation was fun 1 month...but i never understood how Blizzard let it like that so long...
- I mourn the demonology of BRF /cry …for me best Warlock spec of all time (IMHO)….but Blibli decided that 1) it was counter-intuitive 2) they rather preferred we do not play the spec !?!

I just wanted to say that some old warlock still find enjoyment to their class...even if the oversimplification is reducing some of the fun....

Have fun (and Dominion over other classes)

++

[Osmeric]

It's boring and sucks at casual pvp.

In fairness, casual PvP sucks for nearly everyone now.

Right now, on warcraftrealms, there are four classes below Warlocks in popularity (rogue, monk, demon hunter, and priest). Rogues are the real winner of the "hi, we screwed up you class!" award for this expansion.