This has been my first time really diving into M+ as a lock and I’ll say it up-front: the road to KSH was way more tedious and frustrating than I even thought it would be. I’m not one of the best players in the world any longer (was part of a top 50 raid in WotLK), but I can confidently say I’m capable of clearing all content still.
Just as a baseline - I’ve cleared Zek’vir?? as Hellcaller Destro, secured AOTC before the first round of major nerfs to Ansurek, and now crossed the KSH finish line. In other words, I’m playing at the “hardcore casual” level. Here are my thoughts on warlock in its current iteration. I’m hoping the feedback will lead somewhere.
Spec-wise, I ran a Hellcaller build without Channel Demonfire, as I found that the spell caused shear in the rotation and it was problematic due to the plant-and-cast nature of it, given the need for high mobility in nearly all current M+ trash and boss fights. As such, I opted to focus on as much instant cast damage as I could muster.
At first, this seemed counterintuitive because CDF does very much up the damage done in AOE pulls on paper, but in reality, I was often clipping it to reposition or to cast shadowfury for stops. Survival and interrupts will always trump damage, especially in higher keys. But the disheartening thing is that, even with the CDF build, locks have no snap damage. Everything is ramp-up and, by the time I was fully ramped, the pack was basically dead. Realizing this, I cut CDF from the build and focused on what seems to be locks’ strength, 1-2 target damage. I still put out Cataclysm to spread Wither, but then focused on priority targets / curse of tongues. To my surprise, this yielded nearly identical damage done as if I had tried to run a focused AOE rotation on 3-8 targets. This seems … wrong.
Quite literally: Rain of Fire is useless unless there are more than 8 targets. It’s a waste of the GCD because AOE packs don’t live long enough for the damage to be done and it doesn’t do enough damage to begin with to merit a 2/3 soul shard cost, given it’s a static ground AOE. The only time it shines is when your fellow DPS members aren’t doing their job well.
Overall, the thing I noticed most was just how much more work I was having to put in to do damage when compared to other classes. Against similarly geared classes, I was always behind in any fight which has even a whisper of movement and rotational disruption. If allowed to plant and cast, I was top of the meters in boss fights by around 5%, but that experience was few and far between. Perfection of RNG yielded only a 5% difference. Meanwhile, in reality, that was only due to said other group members not also having perfect rotations during those fights. When paired against comparable players and comparable intensity, I was often 5-10% behind them while putting in what felt like double the effort. This was made clear to me when I tried running lower keys on my ret paladin. The ease of rotation and forgiveness of non-optimal play was staggering. There was no major punishment or loss of DPS, just a slight blip on the radar. The same sort of mistakes or hesitation on lock yields sizable DPS loss.
As it stands, warlocks’ damage profile is not suitable for the M+ format when compared with the profiles of nearly every other class. There’s no wonder, in my mind, as to why we’re not even close to being “meta”, even when playing the least rampy of our builds. We’re heavily taxed (multiple shards, or shards + cooldown) for our good spells and our non-shard spells hit for, essentially, nothing. The lack of viable talents to augment our playstyle is also quite glaring. Not to mention that, to do our full damage, we need to maintain two debuffs on a given target which have less than 10 second windows (eradication, conflagration). Any primary target swapping is noticeably punished, even when running havoc due to the % damage loss in the cleave. In fact, we’re incentivized to stick to one target and cleave only with havoc or its partner talent. We’re still capable of doing respectable damage, but a high degree of attentiveness and dumb luck with mechanics is all but required.
Now onto the social aspect: group formation. Obviously, tier lists aren’t going anywhere and have a significant impact on the opinion of the player base as it relates to classes which do not land in the “meta” category. I would love to say “take the player, not the class” but that’s really not smart if you’re expressly looking to push or have a better chance at a smooth run. As it currently stands, warlocks are a BIG gamble in terms of M+. Even the best of the best of us will bring less to the table than specs like ret paladin, enh/ele shaman, hunter, and evoker.
We can’t summon in M+, so we can’t help reduce runback time for small deaths. Healthstones are only good when people actually use them or have them macroed into their defensives. Our interrupt is one of the longest CD variants. Our AOE stun has an absurdly long CD, short duration, and a cast time. Fear is nearly unusable due to dungeon density, though is useful as a casted stop on mobs in an AOE pack. Demon Gate’s reuse CD is so long that it’s only really good for skipping choice trash packs. Really, the only utility we have which isn’t dependant on others using it (and is actually objectively good) is Curse of Tongues / Curse of the Satyr).
It’s no surprise that securing a spot in an M+ group at +8 and above is like pulling teeth. Even trying to run my own keys was an exercise in patience. I often found that the only times I was able to secure group invites was from people who were either unaware or unconcerned about meta classes (or perhaps impatient and simply wanting to get moving). I would love to say this is unique to warlock, but I know it’s true of the experience of DPS warriors and monks and any other class which has the negativity of the meta hanging over them.
It’s possible to get KSH on any class. I’m living proof of that. However, doing so on a non-meta class is an exercise in masochism. Actually, scratch that, a masochist would enjoy the pain.
If you’re wanting to get your KSH, I can’t recommend warlock at this time. It was an unenjoyable slog and took 2 weeks longer than I had reasonably expected for the reasons I outlined above. Now that I’m done with KSH, the only reason to do M+ again is to farm out my remaining allotment of Gilded crests at +8, not for fun and certainly not to push. I imagine having a dedicated team would have given me a completely different social experience, but the class issues I mentioned above are still quite glaring.
Thanks for your time and I hope this leads to positive change for the class I so dearly love.