Some people will probably knee jerk say that advocating for changes to their class (especially as someone who doesn’t play the class) is bad but if you’re objective about it warlock simply has so much utility it amounts to an active annoyance to warlock players. Warlock has:
- Summon Portal
- Warlock Gate (When needed it must be used on every pull, in the proper location)
- Lock Rocks (Usually every single pull during progression)
- Soul Stone (Every pull during progression)
So looking at that, if a Warlock is progressing on a boss like Smolderon, after a wipe the lock has to get food buff, put out a Soulstone, drop a Soulwell, then run around the room to drop the gateway. More than a little excessive. While some other classes have prepull rotations they have to do to maximize their hps or dps but if they miss one of those items rarely will anyone other than themselves know they missed it. Wheras a Warlock misses something they always get called out, “Lock rocks plz”, “Where’s the gate?”, “Where was the soulstone?” which after a while would get significantly grating.
Given blizzards stance on raid buffs I don’t think removal of the utility would be the best choice but I definitely think they need some quality of life changes. For instance, there is no reason for a lock gate to disappear after each wipe, it’s just a time waste to drop it in the exact same spot, rather it should remain up until it’s dropped somewhere else or the warlock leaves the group. Lock rocks, when in a raid could just last until the warlock leaves the group, keeping the one use a pull CD but only requiring one pull a dungeon. Soulstone could remain a per pull ability since other classes have not issue with using a single ability to buff the raid group before pull. These wouldn’t be changes that impact the power of warlock at all but they would make it nicer to play in a raid group, removing the pre-pull chores that you either do or you get whined at after the pull for not doing.