I have been doing some research on class performance and rotation and such things trying to find a main. All youtubers list lock as s tier. I come to forums and it seems pretty unanimous that there are some issues with the class. So, which is it?!
I recognize some lock issues with mobility during combat bit i did not think things were so dire
I’m no expert but I say go with what works for you…
Most players and Vet players I met go with the a Meta-built that usually has a Burst rotation…and apparently for what I read and saw in the talent tree some were change that affected that BIG burst of damage among other flavor variants sub-meta builts.
I personally built my own Petless, vampiric, self-sustain damage overtime built-up Affliction, built for personal (RPG) reasons and have been performing better than expected… I can survive most Burst Rotations even if I lose a LOT of damage… but its super fun specially seeing my enemies blow up in Purple flames! (Still wish I could enhance that talent to stay on bodies long enough to Jump on opponents and refresh it self on contact with each other or the explosions, like a Shadow Blaze Plague)
Either way just try out the specs see what actually you want to go with… with the talent system improve its just a so easy and fun to try new built on the fly!
Again, to the team of devs or Dev who came up with the talent Soul Flame:
I.LOVE.YOU!
I’m so hook with this talent! You really make me feel like a Voss!
(Get it, Boss but with last name of Lilian Voss Forsaken NPC? Ok, it sounded funnier in my head nvm!)
How old are these tier-lists?
Demo was S-tier, but got nerfed a short while back.
Right now, Demo and Destro are like B-tier.
Affliction is still trash. It has been trash all expansion.
Affliction has huge burst dmg due to soul burn and seed of destruction spams. However unless your running it for upper mythic plus, where the self sustain can suppliment the lack of anything that even closely resembles single-target dmg, its pretty much trash. Destro has a nice fire-rain aoe and a mini-cleve set of speccs for multi and single target respectively. Though i would not expect great dmg out of the single target build as it relies totally on lucky procs and huge amounts of soul shard burning. Again what might be considerd meta will be the demo builds though i find them lacking in upper mythics and raids and prefer the affliction sustainability and huge burst aoe dmg, especally for pushing mythics. The biggest problem with affliction is it literally takes a specc built for each specific dungeon to be the most affective which means learning a couple different rotations for different dungeons.
Hope that helps.
no way they’re S tier, pretty much every guide channel has Destro and Demo barely at B tier and i agree with that, other then Solo shuffle locks are in a pretty poor position DPS wise, but no surprise this is pretty typical, blizzard hates locks , probably good we’re not at the top we would just be nerfed worse then we currently are.
Yeah this is true, solid b tier right now and falling.
Early list has demo at s but thats been a couple weeks back or more.
First time in quite a few expansions where Blizzards favourite class WL isnt god tier and people throw a tantrum 
Gameplay wise we are in the swamp.
Now about the raw numbers, DPS, I don’t think tier lists are reliable bro…
Even worse is Youtube searches cause almost every search will result in BS. Like OMG “X” SPEC IS SOOOOO BROKEN… It’s just clickbaits for views.
I myself like to see the situation in Warcraft Logs for raids and Raider IO for M+. Real freaking data.
Heres an exemple (H, all percentiles, ilvl range 403-405):
h ttps://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/31#difficulty=4
DG M+ (15++), specs by population:
h ttps://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-1/all/world/leaderboards#role=dps:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=15:maxMythicLevel=99
Eh, I think it’s more people throwing a tantrum not because purely with numbers, it’s more to do with blizz just being literally unable to decide on the direction they want to go with specs like Aff.
Like, I’m 100% certain they have 0 confidence in the direction they want to go, and if they go anywhere for that spec that isn’t “more dot damage, less dots themselves” than they’re 100% incorrect and dead wrong in their choice.
Half their specs, not just Aff, other DoT specs and then half of the other regular specs, too, just don’t make sense in this game with the talents and design goals. MoP specs made sense and were themed awesomely. WoD had some specs good n themed nicely. Legion had most specs good n themed nicely. BFA had many specs trashed. SL had many specs trashed. It’s a literal design shift for a few specs or certain types. I am frustrated, myself, in these shifts.
From what i played on my warlock here and back in legion) i think when you used multiple UA and drain) and in vanilla, i gotta say i enjoy this the least.
I see other people who are better than me pull decent numbers, but i admit i am not a fan of the proc based approach that seems to be on all specs. I thought i was doi g something wrong. Thats why i came here. What do i see? Everybody seems to have somewhat similar opinion to my experiences
I expect warlocks to be average in the first season of an expansion, so I don’t care that DF season 1 is a melee season.
Gameplay issues matter far more in the long run, and warlock design put two goals over all others - making certain that Wilfreds/Grand Warlock’s Design competed with capstones in each spec, and shifting our profile towards one of sustained damage.
Many of these issues are better covered elsewhere, but I have a few particular gripes.
Shadowburn
This spell should not have a dual resource restriction for such a meager payoff. Being tied to shards always creates an unfavorable comparison to Chaos Bolt, and charges only further limit its usefulness as an “execute.”
Gaze and Soulkeeper
A case study in gaslighting. These are claimed to be improved, but Gaze is weaker on average compared to launch!
Soulkeeper is a ground AOE DOT effect, hindered by tank movement and mob lifespan. Who decided that slashing its damage by 90% on day 1 of 10.0.5 was necessary? Like some intern’s foundational math skills, this wasn’t tested at all.
My mythic+ Destro build never leaves me wanting more. 60k dps on bosses, ST, 75k-200k on trash with a good rain of fire spam.
I have not perfected AOE yet, I feel there are some techniques I could use to imrpove my rotation to get rain of fire going faster, but overall, destro is my favorite for keys.
Would you say that if just doing PVE and Heroic Raids and trying for KSM Warlock is just fine? Trying to decide to main a Lock, Mage or Evoker. Thanks
For sure.
I had no problem getting KSM with Demo in m+. Heroic raid any spec is fine if your group isn’t hell bent on min maxing every second of every fight. You just won’t be considered s tier.
In my exp. Is not that the warlock trees are terrible. For me is that our end points in the talent trees is are pretty poor.
One of my biggets gripe is the dev designing a class tree that has end talents where is one is only for affliction, the other is a .x random increase in your dps (which is terrible), just leave one good selection for the class as a whole.
As for the demo tree, guillotine is hardly used anymore, nether portal still has some bad mechanics, and we have some talents that are not even used because their proc rate (hounds/pact) or point cost is not even worth it.
gameplay mechanics wise, yea we’re kind of in a weird spot.
3 min burst spec in destro without a strong 3-min on-use trinket in raid or the S1 M+ rotation? check
People raged about how even tho affy was strong in SL during CN, shadow’s embrace was awful to manage. Now shadow’s embrace isn’t as bad but they added dread touch. Rapture feels strange. The real kicker is after the patch, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Affy solidly sit in a top 5 spot in raid, even on mythic.
Demo feels like they opened the cupboard, grabbed whatever they had, threw it into a pot and boiled it. If pet AI wasn’t so awful, maybe it wouldn’t be so frustrating but I don’t play it enough to feel invested.
Yeah the pet ai still tends to bug out every now and then.
Hell we still have demontbolt/shadow not proc soulshards on 1st combat usage since i think bfa maybe legion.
Like they just decided some of these are not that imp. to fix ever we as paying players just have to deal with it. And then will outright remove/redesign it when they cant fix it (gg double weapon wrathguard).
Yeah I was wondering why this happens? It seems to happen a lot. It’s frustrating cause I feel like I’m losing my mind 
Here’s a discussion of current performance. Primarily focused on PVE.
Purple lines at bottom = not good.
The Affliction parses are bugged (over performing) and were hotfixed on 1/27 with 3-4 changes. Not sure how much fall off they will see as a result.
ID and DS are still “bugged”. They reverted the hotfix to those because they actually broke the spec so who knows when things will get ninja fixed.
I am finally being brought into mythic prog on Dathea tonight because of how much ST affliction is able to do currently. Still gets destroyed by arcane mage though.