Are they?
I know it’s not considered meta right now, but it doesn’t seem awful
Affliction is also notorious for being bad at the start of expansions because of no stats, and scaling out of control towards the end
I’m wondering if it’ll be super good by the end of SL. Perma slows, rot damage, being able to apply lots of spread pressure via rapture.
Once stats scale up and you guys get a bit more survivability, I think it could actually be good
It’s good.
they are insane and only reason the yare sleeper is ww/warrior keeping them in check
Speaking of warlock scaling, they way Resolute Barrier the endurance conduit looks at 330 ilvl, if you train an Aff and proc it on CD, his wall will be like 76 second CD if I did the math right the other day
people are 100% sleeping on warlock, it’s just a lot harder to play because of the mobility. the warlocks that panic spam their movement instead of using it to stop go’s are the one’s that say it’s unplayable.
wArLoCk Is BaD lIteRaLlY uNpLaYaBlE
Spec sucks
36k death bolt in 2s yesterday and many 20k noncrits. It was my first time running that deal and I gained 150 rating in 2 hours. Just short of 1750.
They’ll be pretty difficult to contend with even in 9.0.5…roughly 5% less physical damage taken and will do 15% more damage against HPal teams.
Warriors and monks will still crap on them. I had a power infused/dark arch death bolt reflected back at me for just shy of 50k. I was a little upset at first until the warrior whispered me saying how lucky he got with that. 
It was a 0.4 second cast
They seem pretty decent. A lot of locks are still withdrawing from Legion and BFA lock design where you do nothing but sit in the middle, tank everyone while lobbing out an occasional Chaos Bolt. Now they actually have to, you know, play the game and use their brain. What a concept.
This is true, classes like Warriors and Monks are keeping them in check. Not every team has one though.
It’s a difficult spec to play well when getting trained, but in the hands of a good player, the extra passive dmg reduction alongside 15% increased dmg against HPal teams is huge.
Those Warriors and Monks, who often play with a HPal, will have to be a bit more careful next patch when the lock is doing 15% more damage to them than they are currently.
They’ll definitely need to respect shadow damage a bit more. It’s pretty much an overall arena buff considering how many hpals you run into.
If spell reflect/overwatch were to be nerfed somehow, I could see them becoming at least A tier in 2s.
They are not. The only reason warlocks have been getting attention and “they’re actually not that bad” posts is because we’re finally getting buffs and the conversation is slowly turning into “warlocks op” as is tradition.
The warlock kit is absolute garbage. Perma-slow is negated by the absurd number of gap-closers that nearly every class has.
Our survivability is limited to a single damage reduction every 3 minutes for 8 seconds.
Our movement completely stops our damage output.
Our damage is determined by massive periods of setup that can be disrupted extremely easily.
All of our damage is pad damage until we can capitalize on a full set of dots being made useful with malefic rapture casts in an insta-cast interrupt-saturated meta.
Our only “go” is purgeable and can be stolen by mages.
We win games when the enemy team repeatedly fails their kill windows.
Fake the casts? Get stunned. When you’re done getting CC’ed you go back into maintenance mode since your dots are starting to fall off and your malefic rapture is about to hit like a wet noodle. Oh shoot time to run though, they have another burst window ¯\(ツ)/¯
Destruction is the true sleeper imo
Idk man. I think locks kit is amazing, mechanically speaking, and you just die too easily to the current meta / high throughput melees. Maybe turn a dead talent into a 1 minute cd to apply a full set of dots or something…
The game already appears to be headed towards a dampener double caster cleave meta, which will help locks a lot. plus nerfs to pally and removal of shadow aura is a massive buff meta wise… Honestly, i look at lock and see a class with incredible damage and offense that is one defensive buff away from being the number one complaint on the forums. Warlock will thrive once the scale tips to double caster and melee just can’t keep up their pressure without dying.
I’ll call it now, afflock will find its way into the meta, be it class changes or just next season gear adding tons of HP, and the corruption slow lego will be the number one complaint on this forum… and the lego will get nerfed several times before this expansion ends.
One thing that really sucks is how hard holy paladin counters them, it’s so silly.
i tried healing one once and he got shredded by a DH lol, spamming my strongest heal and my cd’s did nothing
i’ll just stick to healing warriors 
Lock will be OP later on in the expansion.
Right now they are barely B-Tier since they can’t secure a kill by themselves. Sure they feel oppressive with infinite slow and rot dmg. But unless you let the lock free cast on your whole team with dark soul up, he’s not killing anyone. You feel OP for a few seconds until the warrior notices he’s dying and just leaps behind his healer’s pillar for a quick heal.
The 4 classes locks have troubles with is WW, Warrior, Shaman and holy pally and the the holy pally part is getting very nerfed. When playing shadowplay though the WW actually becomes a liability to their team.
Shadowplay actually has more trouble with spell cleaves then melee cleaves/melee+caster comps.
I’m unsure why people think this. Deathbolt can noncrit for 20k. You can literally 1 shot if it crits.
I don’t think enough people realize this can be done or you’d see a lot more of them.