Current state of Warlocks (especially in M+) and solutions

Classes Warlock
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I’m quoting Petkolock’s post in the EU forum since I find it really relevant, while adding my input as a Destruction main after:

"Hi everyone, some of you might know me from in-game, some of you might know me from discord, but for those who don’t, I’m Elaweawewa/Petkolock long time warlock player, currently standing as world 4th warlock in M+ and hold several rank1 mythic Uldir kills. I’m making this post to raise awareness of the current problems in regards warlock as a class, possible solutions and overall performance of the class in the current M+ and raiding environment.

Side note - This post will NOT include any PvP discussion, it will be rather focused on the PvE.

I will address the current issues with the warlock with all the 3 specs available in the game. First, I have read almost everyone warlock topic available post BFA launch, most of them do not point the main problem that warlocks have, hence the misunderstanding of the class itself, stat priority and sustainable damage input. I have been playing all the specs consistently, with affliction being the most favorable out of them.

I will begin with demonology since it has received the most attention in 8.1, well the main issue that everyone is talking about in M+ society is lack of interrupt that the demonology warlock holds, however, in the current state demonology warlock outperforms Affliction and Destruction by a mile in terms of pure DPS. The reason why you see less demonology warlocks in high keys is, apart from lack of interrupt which is the most important out of everything, another reason is that the mobs should be tanked in a way that they should not be separated by more than 5 yards of each other for the spec to be viable. You might ask why? Well it’s simple, spells such as Bilescourge Bombers, Implosion, Felstorm requires the targets to be close to each other, while most of the time they are, there are few situations, dungeons and affixes that are impossible to face-tank but rather kite, making the spec less viable than it is. Now don’t get me wrong, demonology warlock is, arguably, at its strongest since the beginning of the BFA and has received a lot of love recently, just simply reworking Axe Toss in a way that allows them to have an interrupt in their baseline will solve most of the problems.

Another issue is, they feel way over tuned in a comparison with Affliction and Destruction. Bilescourge Bombers feels slightly overpowered in M+

In raiding environment, Demonology warlocks is the king among the 3 specs. With the recent changes it is the GO spec right now in Uldir, however I do believe Affliction will be favorable in the upcoming raid due to fights being Affliction friendly.

Destruction warlocks, ah, well let’s begin with M+ where they are a viable option for lower to mid key range, they do hold interrupt and their damage input is rather competitive, the overall agenda of the spec feels nice, apart from one major problem, MOBILITY? Yes you heard me, the compared to other casters, destruction has 0 to no mobility and that hurts the spec. Possibly solution, Removing Incinerate, implementing Scorch instead with the same ration of shard-generating as incinerate, or a bit less value perhaps, making it castable while you move, will definitely spread some love among Destruction warlocks. Damage-wise destruction is a viable option in both low to mid end M+ and Uldir (Especially in fights like Fetid,Vectis,Mythrax,Ghun)

At the last, the spec that has received the most attention out of every other one, Affliction. While it is true, we hold a lot of burst potential, and we do crazy damage spikes, the spec feels weak. Yes, it does. You took the single target powerhouse out of the competitive scene without giving anything back to the spec itself. What we suffer the most is low-cleave potential in M+, we do hold amazing ST damage input, but what about adds cleave? Terrible for 99% of warlock’s players, as many people have /w me, “How do I compete with the rest of the players, I always end up last, what traits, azurite traits do I use". Honestly, unless you have more than 93-95% dot uptime, there is no way to compete with the rest of the classes. You need to be at the top of your game to shine, spec feels less rewarding that it used to be. Since the SO nerf (Which had to be done if I must be honesty it was way over tuned), the spec feels weak in terms of add-cleave. I fully advocate for the new ID change stacking with Agony rather than Corruption, that allows a lot of flexibility, removing the old ID exploits, as well as the amazing burst power of 100 stacks, which, let’s be honest, was awesome wasn’t it?

The main problem which NONE of the rest emphasizes is on a large packs (Possibly more than 10 mobs) we struggle to spend our shards, as by the time you apply Agony of every single target, and cast your burst, you are already staying at shard cap, 50 stacks of ID and you are thinking what do I do next? Do I drain and let me stay capped for another 5 seconds or do I use my stacks and sit at 50 stacks of ID while I could use it and get another 50 quickly? What happens if we increase the pack size (Which almost never happens) to more than 10 mobs? Compare yourself to any other class at 10+ mobs and see how do you perform, Yes most of you struggle to get ahead, and that’s why a shard-consuming ability should be implemented, such as making Vile Taint, yes that’s actually a talent we have, if you have never heard of it, base-line spell without cast time, on 20 seconds cooldown with 3 shard consumption. That will allow to be more versatile.
Another issue I’d like to bring is how weak Pandemic Invocation feels in the current M+ meta, we have already established potential shard-cap issue, why do we want more shards? NO, it is completely useless, it is however different story in raid environment where it is among the strongest.

At last, I would like to bring few more general changes that can help the class, removing the cast time of Shadowfury should be done immediately, it is the post painful feeling I have ever felt as warlock in BFA. It is so bad that I don’t blame the warlock not using it when it must be used. For the spell to be useful, you need to predict when your group needs the help of the stun few seconds before anything can happened to them (Talking specifically in regards M+).

There are many, many more issue I could raise but this post will exceed the limited amount I could write so I will leave it for myself or for some other time. I would like also to say that this is my personal thoughts, you don’t have to agree to them but, this is the truth and the reality. Instead of us bashing the developers about the changes, we should offer constructive criticism that they could build upon it and make the class better. I do believe in solving this problem rationally I would love you leave a comment for whether you agree with me or not. Once again, thank you for reading this!"

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I agree 100% with his post. From A Destruction main side who absolutely loves the spec and focuses on M+ (13-16s, 1.3k io) rather than raiding (4/8 M), I want to add these issues aside from MOBILITY (Petkolock mentioned a possible solution for this) which proves difficult on bosses like Yazma, or the last 2 of Motherlode:

  • Our main damage is tied to the Infernal who can only be summoned every 3min, aside from that it’s only sustaining damage. Hence on tyrannical weeks, you need to go GoSup / DSI.
    ! Yet this week, with Necrotic, and generally on anything higher than 15 you need to kite quite a bit which makes CDF necessary. RoF loses value almost entirely.

  • On fortified weeks, you will most likely want to go RB instead of GoSup, and CDF. Which means you need to sacrifice the damage tied to your Infernal (GoSup, DSI) for the bosses. It feels like you have to choose between doing AoE damage and ST which is just horrible for M+.

Possible solution? Give us CDF as baseline ability, or make FnB baseline - or let us change talents within dungeons which is at least a bandage.

Overall, it just doesn’t feel too great needing to wait for your Infernal to do significant damage, who is on a whopping 3min CD and afterwards just juggling to sustain damage. While Demonology’s bursty CDs generally vary from 1.5 to 2min (Grimoire:Felguard).

This, in my opinion, should be changed with a CD reduction.

In comparison to Mages and OP Boomkins atm, we are just no viable option. You shouldn’t be forced to change your class - and many of us just don’t want to.

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Ok many points here are good. Demos need a baseline interrupt. Destro needs better sustained DPS. Affliction should be better on AoE.

That being said, all three warlock specs are perfectly viable for all raid content including CE. All specs are among the top DPS for casters and the upper half of all DPS classes. As far as mythic raiding, all the specs need work. The issue isnt just damage though. 75% of casters have a rough time with movement and static AoE. The problem is that aside from healthstones locks dont bring anything that other caster classes like boomy and ele shamans dont already bring plus more. The only way to get them into the top echelon of m+ is to give them more utility.

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Traditionally we as a class have limited utility in M+. Healthstones, a timed cast brez which often needs to be cancelled and cast again after repositioning (big loss of dps there) and the demonic portal which is by no means necessary unless the group is racing against time and shortcuts in certain dungeons are needed. What we had in Legion though to compensate was big dps. Affliction was godly on pretty much everything with insane aoe and very good st. Destruction was best at 2 target, good aoe with FnB and more than decent st. Demo was pretty much broken for the whole xpack so I won’t talk about it.

In BFA affliction lost its aoe and destruction had its 2 target significantly reduced to the point where other classes’ 2 target cleave is better and lost the rifts which were a great way to compensate for the dps loss on heavy movement. Aoe can be great but not on demand because it’s tied to 2 cds (cataclysm/cdf) and if you find yourself without those ready to be cast, you do less dps than the tank.

What destruction needs atm is either one or a combination of the following: faster or stronger rof, baseline FnB or ability to have both cata and fnb as talents, damage reduction of havoc reverted or cd removed, an offensive spell that can be cast on the move or a baseline proc that makes some casts instant.

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Yes, I agree with you for the most part. I still find that especially Destruction needs to have some sort of change to deal with mobility better - not just in M+; even in raiding, especially on Mythic difficulty. My first levelled class was a boomy, and I had Sunfire, Moonfire and Starsurge as instant casts to bridge movement. Destruction has merely Conflagrate which has 2 charges that you should never cap, so in almost all cases you got one insta cast and you need to prepare for movement. That is why Destruction is one of the most heavily punished specs for movement, and we only have Immolate ticking as a dot.

That is why Petkolock had the suggestion to remove Incinerate and implementing Scorch with the same (or a bit lesser generation) of shards - castable while moving.

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I agree with pretty much everything that has been said so far and I’m honestly surprised that Blizzard hasn’t tackled the problems especially regarding M+ with Warlocks so far (Demo still hasn’t gotten an interrupt, yet a well played Demo outperforms Destro and Affliction now in AoE and sustained ST damage).

Particularly Destruction hasn’t gotten any significant solutions, and Affliction even got nerfed.

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Definitely agreeing with you. Demonic Portal is honestly a great tool for high M+ pushing, if Blizzard would give us more options to use it more often - not taking it away, like Atal’dazar, and increasing the range. I can think of particularly a spot in SoS where my portal is not reaching far enough, but if it could, the Rogue could save a shroud. Unfortunately, that’s just how keys work now - lots of skips to success.
This could actually be a way to make locks more attractive for M+ pushers, despite the lack of soothe or trees or other utilities.

I think purely buffing RoF wouldn’t be enough, since you need to do a lot of kiting in anything past 15/16 keys and on Necrotic weeks RoF significantly loses value - if not entirely. I think baseline FnB or CDF (or even Roaring Blaze!) would solve the AoE issue, without having to give up on GoSup or DSI - which is, like I said, pretty much needed in every dungeon as well for the boss encounters to not hit like a wet noodle.

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