Warlocks feel like they have been steadily going backwards in terms of power and lore

[Elfezen]

It seems like the warlocks are only losing stuff with every expansion instead of gaining in terms of power, lore and overall aesthetics, some of their stuff that remained are not integrated into the main warlock class system such as the talents or spellbook but are hidden far away, here are some examples.

In the past we used to be able to have the grimoire of supremacy which upgraded all demons into other stronger versions but it was removed from the talent tree and instead turned into glyphs for each seperate demon, and because the glyph system was also removed from the main class spellbook, someone has to go and discover that there are glyphs that you must buy and change each demon, and you must buy them seperately for each spec too, so not only it became far less accessible but the average warlock will not even know about those glyphs, but with the talent grimoire of supremacy everyone could see it.

This is possibly the biggest downgrade of all, one of the final talents for warlocks, was able to make the inferno and doomguard as permanent minions, and in addition with the grimoire of supremacy, we were able to turn them into abyssal and terrorguard, which was the peak of the warlock class lorewise, but after both the talent, grimoire and glyph for upgrading them were removed, now there is nothing left for that other than a few seconds of being able to call the inferno, and the doomguard went all the way back into requiring a whole ritual of other people which almost nobody uses, that was the worst decision.

The main warlock abilities for each spec, shadow bolt, incinerate and malefic grasp used to be able to be casted while moving around, but now none of them can do that from either the passive talent or by class design, you have to be standing still to cast them, and in addition, the malefic grasp ability of affliction warlocks stopped being the default spell, and instead they retreated back to drain life which visual effect is underwhelming in comparison.

The green fire questline and the codex of xerath which changes the fire spells into green, is possibly the most major class enchantement of all, yet instead of warlocks either passively having green fire by default to make them different from mages, or at least for the codex of xerath and the questline being unlocked automatically from the spellbook, the only way for someone to learn about it is to either to see another warlock using green fire and asking them how they got it, or to come across the information randomly and read about it, it is so inaccessible to the average warlock that it is ridiculous for something so important.

This might be a downgrade for all classes but especially for the warlock, the loss of the artifact weapons, they contributed very highly to the identity of the class and for those who used the inferno or abyssal as permanent minion, they strengthened it as the greatest tanking companion and they were also making it able to summon more of them when you called it for the first time, this along with other important enchantements that came with the artifact weapons, now the only thing that remains is the transmog of the weapon which feels kind of hollow.

There have never been any further permanent demon minions with any expansion and there is not even an extra spellbook list that we can see all the demons that are available there like the hunters have for their pets, but they are just scattered around all over, in the green fire questline we could tame a pit lord which was even above the abyssal and terrorguard but it was temporary and only for that questline, now all those are gone.

Some of the important passive abilities in the spellbook were removed from each spec, some were removed completely but some were made invisible which confuses the average warlock even more, for example destruction warlocks used to have a passive called Chaotic Energy which increased their mana regen by 625% and spell haste also increased mana regen, that passive was either removed or made invisible which is bad either way, especially for a warlock that was not here when it was still in the spellbook.

The early tier sets and pvp sets for warlocks used to be much more tied to the class and theme of the warlock, especially the tier 6 set and vengeful gladiator set which had the warlock wings when you jumped and when casted some specific abilities, although the helm looked bad because of the hair becoming invisible issue with wow and the wings should have been tied to the shoulders rather than the helm, but all of those sets were adding a lot more to the warlock identity, while the newer tier sets look like bland empty hollow paladin scraps with no identity to each class, especially for the warlock.

The demonology warlock had their metamorphosis transformation removed because the demon hunters had to steal them, and there are probably more but those here are the most significant changes that made the warlocks go backwards.

[Priestyboy]

Im sorry but almost every class is losing so much identity, i don't really understand why they are doing this either. I loved MOP locks and they are never coming back :,(

[unbound]

Happening across the board.

Frost mage hasn't fundamentally changed since WoD or maybe even MoP. They added a couple of tweaks in Legion, which they then take away, but get returned in the form of alternate trees (covenant talent trees in this expansion).

People talk about lore in this game, but the biggest ball drop by Blizz is the fact that we are approaching a decade of ever increasing challenges by our toons, and they haven't learned anything new in that time. They get amnesia and learn some of the lost skills via temporary powers.

Locks got hit because Blizz (bankrupt of any new compelling ideas) had to steal a bunch for DH (and still could only come up with 2 specs for them).

Best advice I can give is to look for a better MMO (WoW is down to 3rd most popular, and you don't have to play *the* most popular to find a good MMO).

[Amariw]

Its especially annoying for affliction in pvp. In Mop, WoD and Legion as well, you could cast lots of instant at cost of greater resources and less dmg then the castable options. This felt so much better vs melee as still felt like you had agency, and while in wod and mop we were fairly strong, Legion also had it (through instant Seed of Corruption honor talent) and Affliction wasn't particularly powerful back then.

Nowadays you basically have to fake for years or queue arena with other casters to get a chance to cast, and while it might not be too weak (as in, good players can still get wins), it just feels so needlessly shitty compared to before, and you're often stuck on full soulshard for huge portions of the match.

a baseline Soulburn spell costing a soulshard which "Makes your next Seed of Corruption, Unstable Affliction or Malefic Rupture casts instant" with a short (5 sec?) cd would feel so much better in pve and especially pvp, but blizz simply seemed to have forgotten about the design.

[LordVargK]

It's not even just the big bombs that were removed. There are lots of minor things, that I miss constantly:

- I miss the Conflagrate trait that slows an enemy by 50% if it is afflicted by immolate. Why was that removed? It is such a beautiful tool for outdoor content. I think that even was an old talent back when we had talent trees. Perfect for kiting and imo essential for destru's outdoor content toolkit
- water walking glyph for your mount, with fiery visuals
- burning cinders animation
- harvest life. The AoE drain life. It was still a shitty spell throughput-wise, but was great for clearing old content. Sadly it only lasted one or two patches.
- of course Fire and Brimstone also working with Immolate (well, and Conflagrate, but that's not as important)

At least SL gave us back Shadowburn. Which is something, I guess. And Malefic Rapture. Overall I think SL was generally a step in the right direction. Two leaps backwards one step forward, I guess.

[Gumble]

If only Blizzard had an expansion coming up where they desperately needed to win back subscribers before the whole game is left behind.....

Wouldn't that be a good time to re-add things to the game and make players happy to play their classes.


If..... only....

[confety]

Fire and brimstone baseline working with immolate and chaos bolt

burning cinders fire aura

ember tap

old demonology

shadowburn baseline and functional

They took so many things from the class in legion and we got nothing in return, its something i will never ever understand.

i dont want curses and casting incinerate while moving, i just want the class to not make me feel asleep because its a incinerate spam simulator, even the covenants more close to warlock fantasy suck.

[LordVargK]

i dont want curses and casting incinerate while moving, i just want the class to not make me feel asleep because its a incinerate spam simulator, even the covenants more close to warlock fantasy suck.

Yes, this was the biggest disappointment of all SL: Every coventant ability the WL was literal shit and did not fit into any spec.
Seriously:
Nightfae? Apart from being visually unfitting, getting a drain life buff? Really? Thanks! (I know it was another DoT and performance wise it was good, but it did not fit at all to any spec)
Kyrian? Nice, an Arcane spell. How fitting. Also a 18 sec DoT that has to be casted. Nice. On my demo lock I did not even use it on CD, only to enable Pelagos before casting Tyrant. Oh, and it was the only one that situationally fitted out kits by providing soulshards. Nearly never happened, but still.
Necrolord? Honestly, I did have to think for a while before I even remembered it. Deathbolt (or what's it called?) That thing that buffs our filler spell once a minute. WOW.
And Venthyr: An AoE that curses things randomly. Once a minute. And did terrible damage with a casttime. Yeah...

Honestly, apart from one nieche case, none of those abilites fit into our spec's toolkits at all. No soul shard generation, no getting imps, nothing. Yeah, maybe it was viable for affliction due to how Malefic Rapture works. But that honestly was probably not even intended.
No thought was made into how Covenants could have been made interesting to WLs. Literally zero.

Fire and brimstone baseline working with immolate and chaos bolt

Did we ever have FnB Chaosbolt? Was it in WoD? Because I'm pretty sure it was not in MoP.

[confety]

Yes, this was the biggest disappointment of all SL: Every coventant ability the WL was literal shit and did not fit into any spec.
Seriously:
Nightfae? Apart from being visually unfitting, getting a drain life buff? Really? Thanks! (I know it was another DoT and performance wise it was good, but it did not fit at all to any spec)
Kyrian? Nice, an Arcane spell. How fitting. Also a 18 sec DoT that has to be casted. Nice. On my demo lock I did not even use it on CD, only to enable Pelagos before casting Tyrant. Oh, and it was the only one that situationally fitted out kits by providing soulshards. Nearly never happened, but still.
Necrolord? Honestly, I did have to think for a while before I even remembered it. Deathbolt (or what's it called?) That thing that buffs our filler spell once a minute. WOW.
And Venthyr: An AoE that curses things randomly. Once a minute. And did terrible damage with a casttime. Yeah...

Honestly, apart from one nieche case, none of those abilites fit into our spec's toolkits at all. No soul shard generation, no getting imps, nothing. Yeah, maybe it was viable for affliction due to how Malefic Rapture works. But that honestly was probably not even intended.
No thought was made into how Covenants could have been made interesting to WLs. Literally zero.


Did we ever have FnB Chaosbolt? Was it in WoD? Because I'm pretty sure it was not in MoP.

the venthyr spell is awesome looking and its probably the worst spell of the game for any class

yeah we had FnB Chaosbolt in WOD when using the charred remains talent, those first trash pulls of BRF were so stupid lmao

[Danifilthy]

When is the last time when they added new talent row?This will be more useful for all classes instead of complicated borrowed power systems.Because after every single expansion we got big hole in our classes and crappy systems trying to fill that hole. And because of this stupid design all classes lost iconic baseline spells.

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

Dot snapshotting alone would make affliction fun to play coupled with soul swap baseline.

[Bakis]

Yea not warlock exclusive. Part od dumbing downt the game, every class/spec suffered from it depending on view.
And the overall view linked to subscriptions says it all.