I don’t do progression raid or progression pvp, But I tend to do a lot of content solo so this is coming from a lock player that relies on their minion a lot for support.
Some history, I played a boosted Warlock during legion and dropped it as I didn’t really know how to solo play with the minion and during that time I never raided with the class and I had only done some dungeons before dropping it for rogue, At the mid-end of DF (around the beginning of Amirdrassil story) I started playing lock again, Now that I reached 70 with them and I’m more familiar with it’s play of all 3 specs and I’m running old raids as well as doing current raids and plan on doing TWW with them. Every minion except the Fel guard feels completely useless or at least very niche; In terms of tanking Felguard is just better than the Voidwalker, the Felguard holds threat much better than the Voidwalker and has around 7 abilities one of which is an interrupt that can affect bosses and the abilities do more damage compared to other minion abilities due to tablets specifically for the Felguard. The Imp has a single ability with damage that tickles you, The Felhound has an imho better ability for say pvp (I’m assuming), the Succubus…I guess whiplash is good for some scenarios, Suffering doesn’t really do much.
In terms of command demon, the Felhound Spell lock is useful for some content but it’s ultimately useless if you can download something in 4 hits or less, Imps singe magic is also very iffy since realistically in a raid, dungeon, etc you’re going to have more than one harmful effect, Seduction I don’t think I’ve ever used it outside of a quest line, I forgot Shadow Bulwark exists sometimes, It’s not really noticable if you have 20 mobs or a raid boss on you.
Now Axe Toss??? It has the same duration of I believe Spell lock but a lot of bosses or mobs are melee and not casters (in terms of their main form of damage) so Axe Toss is just better especially since it’s both a stun and interrupt rather than just stopping one form of damage.
Idk, I’m sure pro raiders or pro PvPers can utilize any of their minions better, But for me I just feel like it’s sad that you have 5 summons and only one of them is actually solid and has around 6 talents dedicated to giving them more damage and having them take less damage. When it comes to hunters there’s no “one is better than the other” cause the families tend to have the same abilities just named differently so it doesn’t matter what pet you take because technically they’re all the same in terms of abilities; You have the spirit beast abilities, the ferocity abilities, etc.
Should be noted for what it’s worth that my lock right now is 490, and half the time my Wrathguard is killing things faster than I can get a cast off but if I was to use any other minion I’m spamming every form of healing I have. Half the time I wanna play destro or afflic and I just end up going back to Demo because having a tank with you just makes things easier, especially in LFR raids or dungeons where the actual tank just eats dirt, Buddy saved so many pugs from wiping, I also appreciate healers that heal Voidwalkers and Felguards whenever they see that the minion picked up tanking you do not get paid enough to heal. Sorry if this seems like it’s all over the place I’m not used to writing out my opinions in a long-form manner.
I’ll try to pay attention to this thread if it picks up traction but I tend to post and then leave to save my sanity.
Blizzard please give them back dual wielding and let use give them armor.