I think that’s a big issue.
Blizzard needs to keep the game “feeling new”, and the primary way they’ve done that in the past is substantial or partial class reworks.
Likewise Warlocks, given our low population in general, historically high learning curve, and small representation in high end PVP and PVE, we tend to be the “experimental” class, their petri dish, as every time there’s a class revamp over the decades, they take away our abilities to give to a class with a higher playerbase.
I’d argue given the nature of our class changes over the decades, it’s clear Blizzard keeps shifting the goal posts as to who we even are. They’re not sure what we are partly due to the fact within the Lore, anyone who doesn’t obey the rules becomes a “warlock” in some capacity. Yeah Gul’dan is the prototype per se, but then we have the likes of Cho’gall or Fandral or what have you that the in-game lore claims for Warlocks.
Examples:
- Warlock Searing Pain became Fire Mage Scorch
- Soul Harvest became Arcane Mage Invocation
- Metamorphosis was given by necessity to Demon Hunters after giving us Dark Apotheosis to experiment with
- The Malefic Grasp animation was given to Shadow Priests
- Our Verdant Spheres were taken away because they wanted to give only Fire Mages that fantasy
- Mortal Coil was changed for Death Knight Death Coil
- The concept of “permanent big pet” was also given to other classes
The other issue is also that Warlock class fantasy shifts goal posts every other expansion. At the end of Cataclysm/Early MoP, our class fantasy via Legacy of the Masters was solidified as:
- Affliction = Twilight/Void magic, both warlocks in the lore representative of the class were considered “insane”
- Destruction = combination of void-rooted Chaos magic in the style of Deathwing, and elemental magic in the style of Ragnaros
- Demonology = investigation of summoning and enslaving demons and self-empowerment via demonic souls and/or fel magic
Then with Chronicle and late MOP/early Warlords, Shadow (which had historically been both Death and Void rooted) became primarily Void rooted, so Shadow Priests became The Void Spec/Class, Unholy Death Knights leaned into the Death Magic Necromancer identity, and Affliction were “returned” to being about… poisoning/corrupting the enemy? With unspecific Shadow Magic.
Then Destruction lost some of our toolkit and was given mainly to Fire Mage.
Then we lost almost all of our inherent Tankiness (e.g. Fel Armor, Demon Armor, baseline everything regarding movements and shields, the implementation of Healthstone CD even for selfheals, Drain Life self heal, Soul Link, etc) because we were the only caster class with that toolkit.
Then Legion came and Demon Hunters became a class and we lost Metamorphosis and with it a lot of flavor like Demonic Leap and stance-dancing (which DHs dont even have! Their Meta is our WOTLK/Cata Meta, not our MoP/Warlords Meta!), etc, so Demonology was reduced only to “summoner” identity, which in material reality meant we became an Imp Mother with a demonic kennel.
Even within the lore we get the short end. Meryl FELstorm for example is a former human mage that uses shadow magic for self sustainment and to serve (pre-Legion) as a living prison for a Dreadlord! And to whomst did Meryl go? The Mages.
Kael’thas’s verdant spheres were originally in the lore as a blood elf blood mage thing where they used demonic souls for power. Instead they became magical floating arcane keys in Legion via retcon again for Mages.
It’s been a tedious ten years. But I still love the game. I love being a warlock even if Blizzard historically doesn’t manage our class fantasy-class mechanics balance well.
Ergo why I made the thread.
I disagree with Kalamazi’s point at the end of his first alpha feedback video where he said, to paraphrase, that we need to compromise and settle. “Be realistic”.
I personally believe we should give honest feedback as to what is dumb, what is great, what is bad, what is good, and what are ideal solutions. It is not the job of the player giving feedback to compromise. That is the job of the developers, to look at what the community percieves, look at their time and resource constraints, and see what is possible.
Plus all the feedback we’ve given outside of the “fun” section (all of which is unpruning save for the demonic grimoire taming system) keeps the “core mechanics” of each class, like they said they’re happy with.
All of our complaints are regarding intra-rotation interactions and the making of certain Azerite Traits baseline for the sake of spec fluidity. That’s it.