Blood Pact: The Warlock wishlist

Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.

The luckier ones among us would have some or most of our Christmas wishes granted yesterday, especially wishes that can be fulfilled at your friendly neighborhood mall - no, your presents are not made by elves in the North Pole.

Some altruistic individuals might have wished for something more nebulous like "world peace". But perhaps nothing feels more nebulous than wishes for improving the Warlock class; world peace might happen sooner than some Warlock wishes in this thread!

Combing through the current 52 pages of the thread, and leaving out complaints and unrealistic requests that will obviously upset class balance, I've come up with this (hopefully) definitive wishlist for warlocks.

Instant Corruption

We are pretty much unanimous in calling for a trainable instant Corruption. Currently, five points in Improved Corruption is simply mandatory for leveling locks and others who want to include corruption in their spell rotation, making it probably the most common talent among warlocks. Given that some 'essential' Mage spells like Evocation, instant Arcane Explosion and eventually Ice Block, have made the transition from talent to trainable, shouldn't this essential Warlock DoT be given some love too?

Pet scaling

This is another pet topic close to our dark hearts. Many warlocks, particularly our Demonology brethren, are calling for more durability and group utility for our pets. While pets are phenomenal for leveling, they quickly become a liability in raids and PvP for demonologists who rely on their pets more than the other specs. In short, pets are not scaling to the increasingly powerful gear that their masters get at level 70, and thus become squishy relative to the mobs and opponents encountered at that level.

There are also calls for the Infernal and Doomguard to be elevated beyond 'party trick' status, and thankfully Blizzard has indicated that they will see some buffs in the future.

Epic flying mount and Green Fire!

Many of us feel somewhat cheated when warlocks lost their exclusivity in terms of mounts post-BC. We had to conform with the rest of the populace, and be content to ride the generic flying mounts when many of us (myself included) had rolled the class to look cool on our fiery steeds. We're not asking for free or cheaper mounts, but let us quest for our class-specific flying mount like we did at level 60.

Hell, make it a tough lore-laden quest, so that the mount can be a proud badge of our commitment to the warlock cabal! A flying demon dragon-like mount would be nice, or turn us into flying demons! And make these inaccessible to gnome warlocks 'cos they'll simply look ridiculous - haha, just kidding.

Warlocks are also concerned about our class identity as a whole - we look too much like mages, especially when we are casting our fire spells. If 'fel' mobs have Green Fire, why shouldn't we? Even our infernals and imps have Green Fire! Fel or demonic fire should simply be differentiated from elemental fire - it's gotta be Green!

Other calls to make warlocks more like cultists and practitioners of dark magic include making our rituals (Summoning, Souls and Doom) more dramatic, and giving us more reasons to cast Ritual of Doom, which we had to quest for, by the way. Give warlocks more opportunity to do their dark, ominous laugh ...

Soul shards

Ah, the perennial Warlock gripe, from as far back as I can remember. I will not go to the extent of calling the soul shard mechanic 'archaic' or 'annoying', considering that other classes have their own resource management concerns outside of health and mana. However, what most players find problematic is that the game forces them to farm soul shards before any other activity.

It is difficult to replenish soul shards in PvP, and there is virtually no way to regain shards in many raid boss encounters, short of exiting the instance (which is also not an option for instances in lowbie zones, such as Zul'Aman). This means warlocks need to come loaded with soul shards, sacrificing bag space and devoting time beforehand to banal farming.

Many warlocks are calling for an easier, quicker way to get soul shards, and for shards to be stackable (fives maybe?) to alleviate the secondary problem of bag space.

Escape mechanism

Death coil's horror effect, originally introduced in patch 1.8, gave warlocks a much needed escape mechanism other than fear. It gave warlocks a way to create space between themselves and melee classes like rogues and warriors, which were and still are the PvP bane of warlocks everywhere.

There are still concerns in the community that warlocks do not have enough escape options when cornered in a melee situation. This lack becomes more pronounced when warlocks compare themselves to mages. One suggestion for an escape mechanism is a self-banish that renders the Warlock immobile and invulnerable for a short time, effectively removing the lock from combat and harm's way like what Ice Block does for mages. On the flip-side of this argument is that warlocks are innately more durable than other clothies, and as such, they shouldn't need additional escape options.

I frankly do not foresee Blizzard responding to PvP anecdotes of a vocal few, unless it becomes a widespread game-breaking deficiency (like pre-coil warlocks who were essentially free HKs). If we base a class's PvP effectiveness on its representation in the Arenas, warlocks seem to be doing quite well.

Firestone and Demon Armor

Many warlocks would like to see more utility out of some spells gathering dust in their spellbooks. One such offender is Create Firestone. Personally I played with rank 1 of the spell for a bit while leveling and have never touched it since. I doubt many warlocks have rank 5 of this spell!

While the utility of firestones and spellstones were improved somewhat when they were moved from the off-hand to the wand slot, many of us can't justify giving up a wand for a fire damage buff - even for destruction warlocks. Needless to say, the melee component is pretty much useless for a ranged caster class. One suggestion to improve the firestone's utility is to introduce a Scorch-like effect to the Warlock's fire-based nukes.

Fel Armor is so good that it makes Demon Armor a pre-BC relic. Suggestions include adding Resilience and more resistances to the essentially defensive buff, so that warlocks will have a choice again with their single self-buff, regardless of spec.

Other wishes to improve utility drill down to specific talents, such as Malediction and other high-tier talents. The general expectation is that if Blizzards wants us to invest so many points to make a talent available, make that talent useful and less situational at least.

What other wishes do you have for our beloved class? What more nasty goodness will warlocks get come the expansion, to differentiate us from mages and deathknights?