I get sick of this "warlocks are over powered" argument.
Bullshit, plain and simple.
They have leveling a little easier because they have a pet, but so do hunters, and hunters have mail armor, less of a dependancy on mana, and pets that can do good damage sans 41 talent points.
As for no talent points, tell me how your colon feels because your head is up your ass so far they're gonna need the jaws of life. An affliction lock is nothing with out the talent points to increase corruption damage, to be given unstable affliction, and to increase DOT damage.
A demonology lock is nothing without soul link and for full demo a fel guard.
A destro lock is nothing without ruin and full destro is nothing without the talents that enhance fire damage.
Warlocks are not overpowered, infact they're just as they should be as one of if not the most damaging class out there. Why? Well warlocks have little to no CC, succubus yeah but if you consider that viable in anything serious you havent used it much.
Rogues can sap, mages can sheep, hunters can trap, but locks have nothing. We have to survive. To that end we have dots, spells that allow us to damage without full focus so we can actually work on surviving.
So no CC, lets continue, like many DPS classes we're limited to cloth, so basically no damage mitigation, but unlike mages we dont have skills like ice block or frost nova to temporarily dodge the damage. Unlike priests we dont have skills to increase armor greatly (yes demon armor, but a few hundered is far from the over 1k that priest get from inner fire) and unlike both we have no shielding spell, save sacrificing a voidwalker which if you're at that point you've already lost.
So no CC, no spells to dodge the bullet, what else is there. Oh yes, we're the most reagent heavy class in the game. Soul shards are a warlocks ass. Run out and you could very well die. Now I will give you that we are also the only class that makes our own reagents, it isnt just sitting down and farting em out, drain soul is a shitty spell with very low damage that either A. kills your DPS, or B. almost kills you. Also our vendor bought reagents, while not necessary, are the most expensive in the game.
So no CC, no mitigation abilities, heavyily dependant on reagents, lets talk about mana. A good fire mage can cast till his hands bleed. They're incredibly mana effecient with talents. Shadow priests return their own mana, and health, just by attacking, hunters have a sting and an aspect that returns mana to them, what do we have? A 5 second channeled spell that has to run for 3 just to pay for itself. Ontop of that all forms of warlock burn through mana. DOTs must be cast multiple times on any pull or fight in a dungeon/raid and cost a good deal and shadowbolt will eat up mana fast if you spam it. So what do we have, we have life tap and dark pact.
First off life tap, health to mana, simple as that. Its one skill that warlocks get heckled and harrased over more then any other. Yes, it lets us retain full mana easily, especially in groups with a good healer, but that makes us very reliant on others to keep our mana up, and just try to life tap, removing large chunks of health fairly quickly, while you have some kind of nasty bleed or poison effect on you, its not happening.
Dark pact is already balanced in that its very deep in the affliction tree and using an imp you get two, if you're lucky or have high int, dark pacts then your imp is spent.
So no CC, no mitigation, reliant on reagents, mana ineffecient, lets talk about stats! Talk to a good guild and they'll tell you one thing, hit rating is your ass as a DPSr. Every single ranged DPS class has some form of talent to lower the needed hit rating except warlocks. Yes we have supression that helps the affliction tree, but even a full affliction lock gets about half their damage from shadowbolting, which requires the full 202 points of hit. I have to gem almost every socket for hit rating to maintain that cap. Because of this I lose massive amounts of possible crit/damage when compared to other classes like mages and shadow priests.
So no CC, no mitigation, reagents like no other, mana ineffecient, and difficult to maintain stats. finally lets talk spell rotations. Most casual players wont really get into this, but the raiders will. What does a fire mage do? Scorch scorch scorch scorch scorch fireball fireball fireball fireball scorch fireball fireball fire ball ect. Two buttons, thats all it takes to DPS effectively. What does a warlock do? We cast DOTs in the appropriate and percise sequence, we then balance shadow bolts with mana regen making sure to then re-apply our DOTs at the exact time they run out, no sooner, no later, then attempt to once again maintain mana and continue shadowbolting. That's an affliction lock, for demo its slightly differnet.
You have to open with the appropriate spell, beit curse of dot, then apply immolate and use incinerate while timing the use of conflagerate so that you final incinerate lands while its still on but you use late enough that you dont lose periodic damage all while maintaining mana.
Someone already said this, but any lock that spams fear, all the time, is a lock that most likely is not in a group very often. There is a time and place for fear, it can be used to hold a stray add off, that is until the diminishing return makes it worthless, under very unique circumstance, but all in all its a pvp skill that rarely sees any use in raids or dungeons.
So whats the trade off to all of this? Damage, balls out, spread eagle up the ass damage. We kill like no other class, that is all we do. We do not heal you, we do not tank your mobs, we do not control the numbers on a pull, we kill that is all we do, and we do it fucking well.
Bullshit, plain and simple.
They have leveling a little easier because they have a pet, but so do hunters, and hunters have mail armor, less of a dependancy on mana, and pets that can do good damage sans 41 talent points.
As for no talent points, tell me how your colon feels because your head is up your ass so far they're gonna need the jaws of life. An affliction lock is nothing with out the talent points to increase corruption damage, to be given unstable affliction, and to increase DOT damage.
A demonology lock is nothing without soul link and for full demo a fel guard.
A destro lock is nothing without ruin and full destro is nothing without the talents that enhance fire damage.
Warlocks are not overpowered, infact they're just as they should be as one of if not the most damaging class out there. Why? Well warlocks have little to no CC, succubus yeah but if you consider that viable in anything serious you havent used it much.
Rogues can sap, mages can sheep, hunters can trap, but locks have nothing. We have to survive. To that end we have dots, spells that allow us to damage without full focus so we can actually work on surviving.
So no CC, lets continue, like many DPS classes we're limited to cloth, so basically no damage mitigation, but unlike mages we dont have skills like ice block or frost nova to temporarily dodge the damage. Unlike priests we dont have skills to increase armor greatly (yes demon armor, but a few hundered is far from the over 1k that priest get from inner fire) and unlike both we have no shielding spell, save sacrificing a voidwalker which if you're at that point you've already lost.
So no CC, no spells to dodge the bullet, what else is there. Oh yes, we're the most reagent heavy class in the game. Soul shards are a warlocks ass. Run out and you could very well die. Now I will give you that we are also the only class that makes our own reagents, it isnt just sitting down and farting em out, drain soul is a shitty spell with very low damage that either A. kills your DPS, or B. almost kills you. Also our vendor bought reagents, while not necessary, are the most expensive in the game.
So no CC, no mitigation abilities, heavyily dependant on reagents, lets talk about mana. A good fire mage can cast till his hands bleed. They're incredibly mana effecient with talents. Shadow priests return their own mana, and health, just by attacking, hunters have a sting and an aspect that returns mana to them, what do we have? A 5 second channeled spell that has to run for 3 just to pay for itself. Ontop of that all forms of warlock burn through mana. DOTs must be cast multiple times on any pull or fight in a dungeon/raid and cost a good deal and shadowbolt will eat up mana fast if you spam it. So what do we have, we have life tap and dark pact.
First off life tap, health to mana, simple as that. Its one skill that warlocks get heckled and harrased over more then any other. Yes, it lets us retain full mana easily, especially in groups with a good healer, but that makes us very reliant on others to keep our mana up, and just try to life tap, removing large chunks of health fairly quickly, while you have some kind of nasty bleed or poison effect on you, its not happening.
Dark pact is already balanced in that its very deep in the affliction tree and using an imp you get two, if you're lucky or have high int, dark pacts then your imp is spent.
So no CC, no mitigation, reliant on reagents, mana ineffecient, lets talk about stats! Talk to a good guild and they'll tell you one thing, hit rating is your ass as a DPSr. Every single ranged DPS class has some form of talent to lower the needed hit rating except warlocks. Yes we have supression that helps the affliction tree, but even a full affliction lock gets about half their damage from shadowbolting, which requires the full 202 points of hit. I have to gem almost every socket for hit rating to maintain that cap. Because of this I lose massive amounts of possible crit/damage when compared to other classes like mages and shadow priests.
So no CC, no mitigation, reagents like no other, mana ineffecient, and difficult to maintain stats. finally lets talk spell rotations. Most casual players wont really get into this, but the raiders will. What does a fire mage do? Scorch scorch scorch scorch scorch fireball fireball fireball fireball scorch fireball fireball fire ball ect. Two buttons, thats all it takes to DPS effectively. What does a warlock do? We cast DOTs in the appropriate and percise sequence, we then balance shadow bolts with mana regen making sure to then re-apply our DOTs at the exact time they run out, no sooner, no later, then attempt to once again maintain mana and continue shadowbolting. That's an affliction lock, for demo its slightly differnet.
You have to open with the appropriate spell, beit curse of dot, then apply immolate and use incinerate while timing the use of conflagerate so that you final incinerate lands while its still on but you use late enough that you dont lose periodic damage all while maintaining mana.
Someone already said this, but any lock that spams fear, all the time, is a lock that most likely is not in a group very often. There is a time and place for fear, it can be used to hold a stray add off, that is until the diminishing return makes it worthless, under very unique circumstance, but all in all its a pvp skill that rarely sees any use in raids or dungeons.
So whats the trade off to all of this? Damage, balls out, spread eagle up the ass damage. We kill like no other class, that is all we do. We do not heal you, we do not tank your mobs, we do not control the numbers on a pull, we kill that is all we do, and we do it fucking well.