A note from Arrens: This is another guest post by Jazz, who has posted here before. Special thanks to him for…well…read on!

Okay folks, I am coming down, and coming down hard this time. Allow me to make a few disclaimers. 1) Apologies all around. When I speak my mind, I tend to be brutal. 2) In terms of playing WoW, I am still quite the noob, I think, so I am pretty sure I don’t know what the hell I am talking about for most of this rant. 3) I am a master at sticking my foot in my mouth. Ankle tastes good sometimes. 4) I welcome criticism and suggestions. You can contact me at jazzarmenta[at]gmail[dot]com.

I have been playing an Undead warlock now for about 6 months. This is the first character I’ve played in WoW. Yes, I am still quite new to the game. I’ve had the benefit of a coach, a very dear friend of mine, who is an officer in a major guild. (Thanks, Nephy. You are awesome!) She has played the game for four years or so now, and shown me the ropes, and I gotta say, had it not been for her tutelage, and the fact that our accounts were linked, thereby tripling the experience points earned, I would have quit before I ever made level 40, and perhaps even sooner.

My character has been level 80 for about one month now. Maybe that’s not long enough. Most of the equipment is purple, and I understand, it is NOT the best purple available. I’ve done dozens of instances, numerous dungeons, hundreds of quests, and lately I’ve gotten in to PvP, upon which this rant is based. From my experience I have to say, the warlock is the weakest, saddest, most worthless character WoW has to offer. It could be the fact that my characters race is Undead. I’m not really sure. But were it not for the fact that I developed my character to maximum cooking and fishing levels, the only use he would have is to summon characters to a raid and provide health stones. With his cooking skill, at least he can provide Fish Feast to the mighty heroes in the party. Woohoo.

The warlock (and I am purposely spelling it with a lower case ‘w’) has no armor – at all. He takes too long to cast any spells worth casting, and the instant-cast spells do little to no damage or offer little to no protection. When he is silenced or stunned, he is a sitting duck; There is no way out; He’s dead meat. Despite using the Detect Invisible spell ad nauseam, it is nothing for a Rogue to sneak up on him undetected, stun him, stab him in the back a few times, and his 20,000 health is negated in mere seconds, Will of the Forsaken be damned. Note: It takes seconds, literally, to cast but one worthwhile spell.

As a group approaches, a Howl of Terror may be cast, but it cannot be cast fast enough. The warlock is stunned, ganked, dead. Not one worthy spell can be cast, so no damage whatsoever is dealt.

When a worthy spell is actually cast, a Chaos Bolt perhaps, it is useless. The opponent is somehow immune to it. There is no apparent “bubble”, he is just arbitrarily immune to it. Immolate maybe? Nope. Immune. Incinerate? Nope. Shadow Bolt? Nope. Oops! Too late. The warlock is silenced, stunned, ganked, dead, release spirit, how fun. In this particular example I am citing, the Rogue that got me the first time is the same one that got me this time. He’s still alive, still standing his ground. I’ll bet he’s enjoying the game!

So, let’s see. . . can the warlock stun an opponent? No. Can he hold an opponent in any way such as an Ice Block? No. Surely one of his demons has such ability. No. Well the Succubus can. But only one opponent can be held in that way, and if the warlock had a few more seconds it might actually mean something, so in practice, no, not even the seductive succubus has the ability to hold an opponent.

Can the warlock deal a single damaging blow of over 10,000 points like a modestly equipped Death Knight does routinely? You know, something that counts? Well, sometimes, but only if it is a critical hit, and only if the spell is cast BEFORE he is decimated in the 1.78 seconds plus delays due to melee he has to cast it, and then wait for spell propagation. Since most level 80 characters have 20,000 points of health more or less, that’s 50% damage dealt in about 2 seconds by the warlock, and 100% damage received by the warlock from a warrior type character in the same two seconds. So what’s DPS stand for anyway?

Okay then, does the warlock have an immune ability? Is there a way for the warlock to simply stand there and neither deliver nor take damage? No. There may be a particular racial ability, but not with Undead. That ability may exist if spec’d in a certain way, but I am not aware of it. In practice, the warlock simply takes it up the butt. He cannot be immune to a sword or axe. Period.

Healing! Well, no, not really. He has Drain Life ability, but can’t drain it nearly – emphasize NEARLY as fast as it is taken from him. He has a health stone, but can only cary one at a time. He can make up to 25 for everyone else. And he can carry healing potions and bandages to the point his bag is overflowing. But health stones are too – I don’t know – special? And they have a two minute cool down versus a one minute cool down for both potions and bandages. That’s WAY too long to have much value in PvP. Oh, and, of course, the Soul Stone. The warlock can rez himself once in 15 minutes. That’s a cool ability, but in PvP its useless. You rez within 30 seconds of each death anyway. So in a raid, who gets stoned? The rez/healer, of course, the more important character.

So a warlock can be stunned, but cannot stun. His spells can be resisted, but he cannot be immune to hits. He can deal a single huge amount of damage, but only if it is a random critical hit, and he may only get one chance at that. He can heal himself a little bit every minute just like everyone else can, but one minute is an eternity in melee. He can drain life but not fast enough. He cannot wear armor, and cannot use but the most basic of weapons in melee combat. And he doesn’t even use them for melee!

Okay, I understand. He is a DPS character. He’s a sidekick, a second banana, a helper. So, then, at even modest levels, he should top out – TOP OUT – the DPS meter. By level 79, and with few buffs or adds from equipment, the warlock should be number one, far and away above anyone else on the DPS meter. But he’s not even that – at least MY character isn’t anyway.

He does have his own demons to help him out, however. Hmph! Some help. An Imp that delivers about 500 points of damage per fireball – which is the only spell he knows, by the way – a Fel Hound that delivers even less damage, but offers an intellect buff. Woohoo.  He also has a Succubus that deals more damage, but is less protected than the warlock himself, and a Voidwalker that flails his arms as much as he complains, and can’t keep agroto save his deep blue ass. The trained warlock can summon an Inferno, which falls to pieces in about a minute. And he can summon a Doom Guard if he has four other friends to help him do it. The Doom Guard is only good for about 15 minutes, however, and I have never used one in practice. The actual tank in the party, whomever that may be, would be fighting a Doom Guard for agro anyway, which some players find insulting. Well, now, we don’t want to insult anyone.

Then there is the Fel Hunter. Awesome tank! But if the warlock is spec’d for that, then his already weak spells become even weaker, by either dealing less damage, or taking longer to cast. Yet, even this vast collection of demons is worthless since they all disappear the instant the warlock is killed, which happens, as we determined earlier, in mere seconds. It makes sense, of course. The demon cannot perform with his master.

Now let’s talk about equipment. Ever been in a dungeon that has repetitive cloth, dagger, and staff drops? Didn’t think so. Ever been in one that dropped piece after piece after piece of mail, shields, swords, and various frilly two- handed weaponry? Sure! Only every freakin’ one of them! So where’s the cloth? I mean the GOOD cloth? Purple, you know? There just isn’t a lot of cloth drops, and you have to repeat raid after raid to get enough emblems to buy any, I guess. I mean you can’t even buy descent cloth on the auction house. Yet there are 20 pages of swords and axes.

Because my character is cloth wearing character, I also maxed out tailoring. It makes sense. If you can’t find it, make it! What a joke. By the time you get the training AND materials to make purple stuff, you already HAVE better purple stuff than you can make. Seriously? Better suits of warlock armor, such that it is, cannot be made? This is only a cloth using character for crying out loud! One high level shield offers more protection than ALL of the cloth items the warlock can wear put together.

Daggers? Staves? Yes, you MUST equip them, not for the damage they will do whilst being wielded, however, but for the modest – well perhaps somewhat more than modest spell increases that are obtained.

Yes, I am starkly disappointed in the warlock character. Blizzard? BLIZZARD, ARE YOU READING THIS? You nerfed the hell out of the Death Knight. Start at level 57 or so. Give him all kinds of fancy weapons and such. The Death Grip ability – that’s so cool! Why did you make the Death Knight? Were people losing interest in the game? It seems like Blizzard made the Death Knight for, well, kids, frankly. It was made for individuals who don’t want to take the time to study and level a character, who want instant gratification, who understand rudimentary elements of an RPG such as “chop chop you’re dead”. That seems like a kid’s mentality to me. What have you done for the thinking geek such as myself?

Do you think maybe the warlock could have, I don’t know, a Blink spell maybe? You know, to help with escape. How about a Shadow Enforce spell? Let me explain. A Shadow Enforce would be an instant-cast spell that negates Stun and Silence spells for 45 seconds. Give it a 4 minute cool down so it’s not TOO much of an advantage. Or, how about if you give the warlock his own bubble? I mean every other character has some kind of immune ability. Can’t a warlock have one too? If a Rogue can stun, then kill a warlock in just a few seconds, couldn’t a warlock have at least a chance at escape? If a Death Knight can death grip a warlock (or any character for that matter) shouldn’t he have some kind of means to counter it?

You know, when I think Warlock (capital ‘W’) I think of the Grim Reaper. And what does he do? That’s right – Touch of Death. Give a warlock a Touch of Death spell. Include a percentage chance of failure, though. And give it at least a 1.5 second cast time, and a 4 or 5 minute cool down. I mean, again, we don’t want the kids to lose interest, so don’t make their Death Knights die too quickly.

As it stands, the most fearful, powerful un-buffed spell a warlock has is Curse of Doom. It deals 7200 damage over one minute. . . and it can’t even be used on player characters in PvP. Worthless.

In addition to saying I am starkly disappointed in the warlock, I am compelled to reinforce my rant with a quote from a player I met in a random dungeon. He was a tank, and I did not like the way he was tanking, so I made my message subtle, but clear. His response: “We could run this entire instance with two tanks and one healer. We just need DPS to speed things up.” To paraphrase, he was saying, “I want to get through this dungeon quickly so I can get my emblems and fancy gear that drops for me. Only under those conditions am I tolerating your worthless bony ass.”

Yep – Seems I need to just put the whole damn game down for while. Please remember, Blizzard, I am a paying customer too. You wouldn’t want me to lose interest would you? But, then again, what’s one more warlock?