The Doom of the Warlock

[Kralljin]

every class should have the BASELINE of everything, and each class should have weaknesses and strengths.
meanwhile warlock is the only class with NO baseline movement and NO baseline interrupt...
its fucking garbage. maybe have their intterupt just do nothing (compared to other classes where their intterupt also buffs them, like DH)
make their movement speed buff small, compared to the amazing mobility of the mage or rogue.

I personally disagree on that conclusion.

I think interrupts is something that has gone completely out of whack, let's be real, everyone feels like interrupts are necessary because of M+, because so many packs throw X casts at you that need to be stopped.

Second, mobility has become an issue because it has become totally powercrept, look how mobile classes were in Wotlk / Cata (almost 6 years after Classic), look at how mobile they were ~6 years (Legion).
Both Monks and DH have somehow completely blown the lid off in terms of mobility and forced every class / spec to follow because Blizzard started to design the game around that.

WoW as far as class design is concerned has a serious powercreep issue, you don't need everything on everyone if not every encounter / dungeon forces you to have it.
That's the crux at the end the day, people want that sort of thing because a lot of encounters make this things necessary / extremely helpful.

Also, it feeds into the issue i've been talking above: Blizzards philosophy.
Blizzard has the bad habit of giving something to 80% of all specs, but then leaving out a handful of other specs for the sake of "strengths and weaknesses".

A good example here is Resto Shaman, they are the only Healer without some external CD for their Tank, any other healer has in some shape or form a way tool to help their tank stay alive in a tricky situation (Pain Sup, Guardian Spirit, Ironbark, etc..)
You're not making any other healer feel good about having that, you're just making Resto Shaman feel bad about having none because no other healer struggles with that sort of thing.

Classes used to stand out for what they can do, nowadays they stand out for they can't do.

[FreeHongKong]

"One expansion" what...?
We are rarely ever top of the meters, there has only been a handful, and its usually 1 fight or 2, because of specific circumstances.
I mean lets look.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/24
Wrathion- 2 locks, 5 DH, a druid, a hunter, and a warrior, its pretty spread
Maut- Mostly destro lock, with a few fire mages, pretty good fight for destro
Skitra- Obvious, all destro, except well a rogue in top but thats 1 dude
Xanesh- All fire mage and a few warrirs with a few locks
Hivemind- All fire mages
Shadhar- Warrior and DH
Dres- Destro lock
Vexiona- All fire mage'
Raden- All fire mage
Ilg- Destro lock with some shadow priests, fire mages, and a warrior,
Carapace- fire mage
nzoth- fire mage and destro lock

Overall yeah a fair few locks, behind fire mage which is insane, but guess what.
a fun class, one that feels good to play, is not one that is "top of the meters" especially since destro lock is only top of the meters cause of azerite traits, which well... we arnt gunna have in Shadowlands.

We want a fun class, one that feels good, and one that has its strengths lowered, and its weaknesses strengthened.
Every single lock i have met misses the old days of every chaos bolt being strong, and being less common, now it just feels super fucking patheticly weak, the only time it does damage is at the end of an infernal, and every lock ive spoken to about it hates how all our DPS is shoved into the infernal, outside of it "meh" inside of it we hit INSANE numbers.

Like look at this, its fucking sad, i hate it, and so do so many more, It should be more small lumps where "Oh there is where he got off a chaos bolt!" not "oh thats where he summoned infernal!"

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What does recklessness have to do with anything?

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Demo is the only spec that can really pull it off, because its split with your demon, and that makes it actually much more managable, but again, in a raid its amazing, cause you have healing to spare, but it still feels like shit, and isnt fun to have to take a talent, to get movement, while every other class doesent.

You said can’t chase mobs that run away... curse of recklessness prevent runners...

L2p

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Idk if you know... but while placing your gateway, and using the gateway, you cant cast spells... just gunna say

also there is many more bosses that slow you out there... and again, there is such things as pvp, mythic plus, world content, torghast just gunna say, the "being unable to be slown below 70%' is fucking hilariously overpowered in Visions of nzoth, just leadenfoot? what the fuck is that, lol.

and yeah, you have healers, but unless your healers are overdoing themselves, i would love for you to tell your healer "hey im taking 4% a second cause i wanna move fast" and in PVP where every percent matters, it matters. Also gate is very rarely "amazing" and not "amazing every fight in history" like you say.

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Affliction warlock, which overall was broken as shit? cause of artifact stuff and the fights there? yeah? But now its destro locks, its called borrowed power, the only reason locks have been so good is cause of borrowed powers, we keep just getting the most annoying shit
and again
as me and many others have said a million fucking times


BEING TOP DPS, DOES NOT SUDDENLY MAKE THE CLASS FEEL GOOD, PLAY GOOD, OR ENJOYABLE. JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE TOP OF THE METERS, DOES NOT MEAN THE CLASS IS FUN

it dont fucking matter if i do more dps then everyone in the raid, if when the mob casts their heal they return to full hp and all my dps was wasted, cause oopsie i dont have a fucking interrupt!

It's boring, it's clunky, and it's unenjoyable, affliction is even more bursty, demonolgy suffers even more from its casting, and destruction still is just a "I got infernal, now i can dps" all with warlock overall being "my dps cooldown is ready, now i can actually dps"


THIS IS NOT GOOD, DPS SHOULD NOT LOOK LIKE THIS

You do have an interrupt scrub.

Felhunter
Fear
Deathcoil

L2p

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I personally disagree on that conclusion.

I think interrupts is something that has gone completely out of whack, let's be real, everyone feels like interrupts are necessary because of M+, because so many packs throw X casts at you that need to be stopped.

Second, mobility has become an issue because it has become totally powercrept, look how mobile classes were in Wotlk / Cata (almost 6 years after Classic), look at how mobile they were ~6 years (Legion).
Both Monks and DH have somehow completely blown the lid off in terms of mobility and forced every class / spec to follow because Blizzard started to design the game around that.

WoW as far as class design is concerned has a serious powercreep issue, you don't need everything on everyone if not every encounter / dungeon forces you to have it.
That's the crux at the end the day, people want that sort of thing because a lot of encounters make this things necessary / extremely helpful.

Also, it feeds into the issue i've been talking above: Blizzards philosophy.
Blizzard has the bad habit of giving something to 80% of all specs, but then leaving out a handful of other specs for the sake of "strengths and weaknesses".

A good example here is Resto Shaman, they are the only Healer without some external CD for their Tank, any other healer has in some shape or form a way tool to help their tank stay alive in a tricky situation (Pain Sup, Guardian Spirit, Ironbark, etc..)
You're not making any other healer feel good about having that, you're just making Resto Shaman feel bad about having none because no other healer struggles with that sort of thing.

Classes used to stand out for what they can do, nowadays they stand out for they can't do.

Resto shamans have NS heal and they have ancestral totem

[Kralljin]

Resto shamans have NS heal and they have ancestral totem

NS is dead since Legion.

And Ancestral Protection Totem is first off all a talent, not baseline and on top of that comes in with a loss of threat and the tank comes back with 20% HP.
Calling that an external CD is grasping at straws.

[FelPlague]

You said can’t chase mobs that run away... curse of recklessness prevent runners...

L2p

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You do have an interrupt scrub.

Felhunter
Fear
Deathcoil

L2p

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Resto shamans have NS heal and they have ancestral totem

1. Reckleness is not in the game currently, and in shadowlands it is a curse, so it replaces other curses
2. recklessness only stops fear, not monsters having abilities that run
3. recklnessesss does not stop mobs being pulled from you, or players running from you
4. felhunter is not baseline, especially since its a dps loss for demonolgy
5. fear is not an interupt
6. deathcoil? that is a DK ability, not a warlock ability, do you mean mortal coil? again not intterupt, and its a talent.

You need to learn to play obviously.

[Shandalar]

The thing Im more concerned is Blizzard absolutely ignoring the Warlock feedback on the alpha forums.

[Kalisandra]

Imo they could bring it back, but in a different form. Sacrificing health for power is a very warlocky thing to do. Just make it a short cooldown of some kind, giving us extra haste at the cost of 10% health or something like that.

Not a boring maintenance buff like the Legion talent, make it a 25 second cooldown for some sweet haste.

So, 10% Haste buff at the healers' expense. And either it's small enough of a cost that the healers don't notice, and everyone wants the same, or it's big enough that healers won't want to have to deal with Warlocks.

This is one of the great lies of class design.

Classes without mobility are just plain worse, whatever survivability we get doesn't make up for not being able to get around quickly, not even close.

Let me show what a class with a ton of mobility (Demon Hunter) has: Passive 10% magic dmg reduction, an immunity if talented, two defensive cooldowns, massive (passive) self healing.

I don't think you'll get far trying to use DHs as an example of how Locks are hard done by - everyone is compared to DHs.

[FreeHongKong]

1. Reckleness is not in the game currently, and in shadowlands it is a curse, so it replaces other curses
2. recklessness only stops fear, not monsters having abilities that run
3. recklnessesss does not stop mobs being pulled from you, or players running from you
4. felhunter is not baseline, especially since its a dps loss for demonolgy
5. fear is not an interupt
6. deathcoil? that is a DK ability, not a warlock ability, do you mean mortal coil? again not intterupt, and its a talent.

You need to learn to play obviously.

Bunch of cry babies it seems like.. want your cake and eat it too... play another class or stop playing seems like all you do is complain..

God damn. Grow up.

[Kalisandra]

I think interrupts is something that has gone completely out of whack, let's be real, everyone feels like interrupts are necessary because of M+, because so many packs throw X casts at you that need to be stopped.

As someone maining a Ret way back when they gave Paladins (all Paladins, for some insane reason) an interrupt in Cata, it was a mistake. At the time Ret players were divided about whether we needed a close or a kick more (or both), and in the end Blizzard gave us some mobility (nothing like an actual closer, though) and a kick. I think they should've given us some sort of Heroic Leap, and not a kick.

Ever since then it's been expected that DPS has an interrupt (locks being the exception sometimes), especially melee, yet somehow these days it's assumed that the tanks will do most of the interrupting.

Second, mobility has become an issue because it has become totally powercrept, look how mobile classes were in Wotlk / Cata (almost 6 years after Classic), look at how mobile they were ~6 years (Legion).
Both Monks and DH have somehow completely blown the lid off in terms of mobility and forced every class / spec to follow because Blizzard started to design the game around that.

And yet some classes are less mobile now than they were in MoP, and they sure as heck didn't get compensated anywhere else.

[Kralljin]

And yet some classes are less mobile now than they were in MoP, and they sure as heck didn't get compensated anywhere else.

Because Blizzard has a kinda halfassed approach to this philosophy.

For example, they deleted Gust of Wind with BfA from Resto / Ele, because "Mobile caster is a Mage thing" Shaman are supposed to be immobile, yet completely failed to follow up where Ele in the case is supposed to be strong.
Blizzard randomnly decides one day that they don't like certain mechanics and then delete it off almost every class (cast while moving for example) barring a few exceptions without looking at the greater context what it does to certain classes.
Or just remove something from a class because it doesn't fit their vision.
Does it ruin the class / spec? That's a secondary concern.

I just don't see Blizzard having any sort of plan when it comes to that, they're like bureaucrats that one day realize something is not according to rules / specifications, then change it because it must fit a certain rule set, despite that rule set clearly not taking everything into account.

Lastly, that section you quoted is kinda poorly in hindsight, i meant to compare the most mobile classes, not necessarily mobility on every class.

[Shandalar]

Blizzard seems very worried about the best caster of the game, the Fire Mage, but dont worry they just have gotten a personalized blue post, changes to the mastery, a new baseline spell and a new talent (wip).

Meanwhile warlocks get nothing.

[Kinjin]

*Pats FreeHongKong on the back.
*Hands over a kleenex.
It's okay princess. Show us where the bad Warlock touched you.

[Pacem Aeternam]

One expansion where you aren't top of the meters every fight...

BLOW IT UP. REWORK EVERYTHING. DEAD CLASS.

Morons.

I can tell you've been on the receiving end of sone big D Chaos Bolts.

[Scrotles]

I can tell you've been on the receiving end of sone big D Chaos Bolts.

I can tell you're new here. exit stage left.

[Pacem Aeternam]

I can tell you're new here. exit stage left.

I've been on MMO Champ since it came out back in 2007, exit, stage right.

[chriskoo]

I personally disagree on that conclusion.

I think interrupts is something that has gone completely out of whack, let's be real, everyone feels like interrupts are necessary because of M+, because so many packs throw X casts at you that need to be stopped.

Second, mobility has become an issue because it has become totally powercrept, look how mobile classes were in Wotlk / Cata (almost 6 years after Classic), look at how mobile they were ~6 years (Legion).
Both Monks and DH have somehow completely blown the lid off in terms of mobility and forced every class / spec to follow because Blizzard started to design the game around that.

WoW as far as class design is concerned has a serious powercreep issue, you don't need everything on everyone if not every encounter / dungeon forces you to have it.
That's the crux at the end the day, people want that sort of thing because a lot of encounters make this things necessary / extremely helpful.

Also, it feeds into the issue i've been talking above: Blizzards philosophy.
Blizzard has the bad habit of giving something to 80% of all specs, but then leaving out a handful of other specs for the sake of "strengths and weaknesses".

A good example here is Resto Shaman, they are the only Healer without some external CD for their Tank, any other healer has in some shape or form a way tool to help their tank stay alive in a tricky situation (Pain Sup, Guardian Spirit, Ironbark, etc..)
You're not making any other healer feel good about having that, you're just making Resto Shaman feel bad about having none because no other healer struggles with that sort of thing.

Classes used to stand out for what they can do, nowadays they stand out for they can't do.

Back in Vanilla and TBC, Blizzard compensated Warlocks with larger HP pool and higher armor, since Warlocks were bad at moving, with no baseline interrupt, etc. The high HP and armor are gone after gear normalization.

[Lucrece]

Back in Vanilla and TBC, Blizzard compensated Warlocks with larger HP pool and higher armor, since Warlocks were bad at moving, with no baseline interrupt, etc. The high HP and armor are gone after gear normalization.

Which meant jackshit because whatever lethal mechanic hit you would kill you anyways and in PvP you got bent over by rogues and mages and warriors anyways. Vanilla and TBC are garbage.

We had that extra survivability in Legion and it got gutted in BfA.

[gaaara]

i know this is a bit off topic but is that freehongkong guy just trolling hard?
L2P...is all he says lol.

Anyway ontop i hope they consider call felhunter pvp talent as a baseline for demo. Fear/Stun/Mortal Coil(Talent), doesn't work on bosses, which is probably where things get a bit annoying, eg shrine of the storm.

[Necroxis9]

I've played a Destro warlock for a few expansions now and I'm super glad we aren't getting Doom back lol.

[Scrotles]

I've been on MMO Champ since it came out back in 2007, exit, stage right.

Ohhh so you're on a new account because your a pleb. Makes sense. Or of course you got banned which again, pleb.

[Shandalar]

Well, seems like Warlock doesnt matter anymore. Now Blizz's eye is focused into the things they care, like Mages and Shadows.