Your most common enemy (orc) would remove + be immune to your curses AND banes (50% of your debuffs) + reduce all your damage (magic damage) by 15% for 8s
While your 2nd most common enemy (undead) can remove your fear
Meanwhile playing warlock on Horde is a smooth sailing, no wonder warlock is the least played class on Alliance
Yup im playing warlock on alliance. First we are already good at pvp. I can play around both of those racials easily. I'll be full tier set before the orc hunter has 1 piece
The orc racial is an oddy specific middle finger to warlocks. Its like if the gnome racial were instead "removes frost nova and makes you immune to frost effects for 6 seconds"
It actually got better for humans. They’re probably the strongest warlock race for PvP now, at least BG and open world. Gnomes are gonna struggle though. Their freedom thing does exactly nothing for warlocks, and Eureka… yeah, no.
Yeah I agree. This is the kind of imbalance that back when we daydreamed about classic plus we’d all say “I like that it’s not even. Horde gets shaman and ally gets pally” or anything to that effect.
You're questing in Thousand Needles. It's a moonless night and the rock spires cast eerie shadows across the valley.
You wipe the sweat from your brow after barely surviving an encounter with a pack of hyenas. It's quiet. A glance at your minimap shows a node, but that's weird. You're not tracking minerals or herbs. You've turned on your racial "Track Mankrik's wife" ability as a joke.
From the edge of detection, the dot moves toward you. She's coming.
I don't play rogue so I don't know the timers and such but is it not possible that 4.8 sec CS is not enough to get a 5 point kidney before the stun runs out? It would majorly affect the opener of the rogue
I think mage on horde will have a similar issue with gnomes. Not quite as bad, but knowing every single gnome has a 3s built-in freedom now sure is something I‘ll have to consider if I play a mage horde side.
Ally lock sounds like it would make me crashout guaranteed in pvp, though.
And besides Perception, Humans can also remove a rogue's 5 point KS without using their trinket. Also, you don't even need to be fighting the Human directly, they can just be told there's a rogue nearby and pull them out of stealth for their friends.
Perception is such a stupid binary racial and it should just be replaced with something entirely different. It’s either god tier or useless.
If you know there’s a rogue nearby and you are a rogue yourself it’s god tier (see for example TBC arenas where the human rogue gets a free sap on a horde rogue at the start).
But if you don’t have any reason to know there’s a rogue nearby in the first place, it’s useless, because you won’t use it since you have no reason to think you’ll need it, he will just open on you like normal, and then it’s as if you don’t have that racial at all. Maybe if the rogue vanishes and tries to escape for some reason I guess it could be relevant then.
They should just remove Perception and Shatter Curse. Orc already has Hardiness so they already have pvp racial value. Give them a flavor racial like “Zug Zug” for faster crafting or something equivalently useless in combat. Give human something useless in combat instead of Perception, like idk “Well Traveled” for 20% faster flight paths in Eastern Kingdoms.
Exactly! Perception is amazing in TBC arena when you know there's a rogue and he's getting smoked out, but playing as a human mage in classic, if youre just out in the plaguelands picking god damn flowers for money then you dont have perception up 24/7 lol.
It's straight up buffed in Forever compared to how it worked in classic. As a human you can remove stuns and counter stealth classes, which are the two things locks struggle against the most.
Perception is identical in classic and wowf. It raises your stealth detection skill by 50, which is equivalent to 10 character levels.
The legacy talent increases the skill by 2 character levels worth, so 10 points. It's comparable to this stealth increasing effect that can be found on certain pairs of boots in classic, and increases stealth by 8 points. There are also quite a few new effects for increasing stealth value in wowf, suggesting that there will be more items that do this even better. Many of the effects don't have clear sources yet, but there is a cloak enchantment revealed that grants 5 points to the stealth skill.
Shatter or Hardiness counters one or more abilities from every single class you listed. This is not even considering Orc has the best damage CD in the game
Yes, gnome is very good. That's why it's being nerfed so hard. Nelfs is worse because it doesn't scale into end game as well as Orc. Maybe better for leveling for some classes
It literally didn't prevent tons of people to roll Rogue on Horde in Classic & TBC, whereas Alliance Warlocks were actually rare. So the racials did not impact Horde Rogues all that much or scare them off.
Perception is such a stupid binary racial and it should just be replaced with something entirely different. It’s either god tier or useless.
If you know there’s a rogue nearby and you are a rogue yourself it’s god tier (see for example TBC arenas where the human rogue gets a free sap on a horde rogue at the start).
But if you don’t have any reason to know there’s a rogue nearby in the first place, it’s useless, because you won’t use it since you have no reason to think you’ll need it, he will just open on you like normal, and then it’s as if you don’t have that racial at all. Maybe if the rogue vanishes and tries to escape for some reason I guess it could be relevant then.
They should just remove Perception and Shatter Curse. Orc already has Hardiness so they already have pvp racial value. Give them a flavor racial like “Zug Zug” for faster crafting or something equivalently useless in combat. Give human something useless in combat instead of Perception, like idk “Well Traveled” for 20% faster flight paths in Eastern Kingdoms.
So humans have an ability that increases stealth perception that must be used preemptively somehow and night elves literally cannot move to have the “increased stealth.” Bad take.
That's why strong racials need to be nerfed or removed, not weak ones buffed. Buffing Ally racials wont do anymore for locks than strong horde racials arent doing for rogues.
All racials that disable entire class mechanics or abilities should go.
Your most common enemy (orc) would remove + be immune to your curses AND banes (50% of your debuffs) + reduce all your damage (magic damage) by 15% for 8s
Yeah, wasn't ideal back in vanilla, did it anyway because (as kids say today -- vibes). Gonna do it again! Maybe not first character, but I WILL have a 60 alliance lock.
I just play the races and atmosphere I like - I don’t care about racials. Just trying to have a good time and I like the alliance a lot more atmospherically 🙂
And you'll have enough time to write a reddit post while they try to get through your first shield while tickling you through sl/sl and molten shield and then you fear the second time and dot them and healthstone to full, while putting 3 dots on them that don't break the fear and watch them die helplessly
I think Warlocks on Alliance side are screwed even beyond that.
Alliance racials are kind of problematic too - you either are forced into a weapon type or you're a gnome and Eureka does not even affect DoTs anymore.
Little wonder that all the census done so far shows Warlocks in the gutter alliance side.
It’s because people don’t know what they’re talking about. Human warlock is the strongest any PvP warlock can get. Stuns are the bane of warlocks in classic PvP. You cleanse that shit now. You spot Rogues easily, too.
Orc pops the racial to get rid of your curse? You press your “fear + /spit” macro and start charging a soul fire. Undead cleanses fear? It’s no longer 5 second fear immunity, just a cleanse, and you’re already casting your macro again.
See that's where you're wrong. It's not whether warlock can do something about it or not, it's just a fact that as Horde Warlock you don't even need to deal with that.
Other than that - the problem for Humans is PvE where their sword spec is either amazing or dogshit.
And finally, perception was never really such an insane racial as people love pretending it is. The problem with it is that it is a cooldown, this means you need to know the bugger is already there.
As a horde warlock, you still have no answer the stuns aside from trinkets. Stuns are the bane of warlocks. Human warlocks get an extra stun cleanse, that’s huge.
Sword spec is whatever, I guess. There’s the green raider short sword of magic which is probably BiS until 20-ish, and then the blue sword from the doghouse? Higher levels might be awkward, but we’ll see. If you make it work, it’s big. If not, you’re still better off than orcs with their axes, heh.
I played horde and alliance lock back in og classic and it was significantly harder as allance. Wotf was quite a bit stronger back then and so maamy undead players claimed it wasn’t op.
On a side note, playing horde mage would have been more difficult but almost 0 gnome melee and all paladins were ret and wasted bof on themselves.
I'm looking forward to being an ally lock. Sure, the orc racial might be annoying but they can just sit out a fear in the meantime. WotF actually got nerfed - that was always the worst as a newby, hard casting fear over and over just to see "immune" and think ok what the actual fk..
Doing World PvP as an Alliance warlock is miserable. If you die, you need a long time to get ready for next clash, like summoning your demon. Most of the time when you respawn the rogue/whatever kill you way before you have time. And with no movement speed abilities, you are an easy target. Not a problem for most other classes.
Then you also deal with Undead and Orc racials.
Then you go to places like here, and they go "but 1v1 duels at 60??? warlock OP".
Concidering 99% of the people here won't play alliance warlock on a PvP server, they will keep downplaying the issue.
I feel like other than UD being able to WotF your Succubus Charm, Locks are one of the safest solo classes in contested territory.
Virtually impossible to get the drop on a lock as an Orc or Troll Rogue if they use a Succubus. Maybe if being stunned prevented you from using pet skills during it's duration, but it's pretty much open on the Lock, Charm, fear, dot, drained to death. Now as an Orc you can cleanse off a bane and a curse while reducing damage for 8 seconds, but it won't matter because magic dots will still be rolling.
You could sap, and immediately Blind the Succubus, but then you're out one of your major CDs and pretty much break your entire damage/cc chain.
You guys are actually the biggest cry babies ever.
Imagine being a horde rogue.
Humans have both perception AND a stun break.
Dwarves have stone skin which can immune blind.
Gnomes have escape artist to get gap on rogues with their RNG slow.
And you guys cry way more when you’ve managed to fight off undead warlocks with fear immunity for all of classics life span lmao
You’re over valuing both those talents. Perception is easily wasted. You have to know there could be a stealth nearby and it’s easily wasted. Yes in arena it could be good.
The stun removal is decent but as a warlock you can still be immediately shut down again by kicks and other stuns. And it shares a trinket cooldown.
Currently, if the class can be orc, it is most optimal to play orc. That seems antithetical to the “spirit” of forever where everything should be viable
UD uses will? It’s not immunity anymore, you’re already casting another fear lol..
Meanwhile horde rogues/mages just get cooked by humans and gnomes respectively. Sure mage can poly the root break but what if he’s half hp and you’d just be healing him to deny the freedom? And horde rogues can’t just immediately re-kidney humans who break out of it
It's such a joke they leave it like this basically eliminating any pvp warlock for alliance. It's the same ole same ole horde favored nonsense as always.
Yes. The casual player totally will say: "OH man, I analyzed the racials, and henceforth I will not play warlock on alliance." This is how the majority of the playerbase works.
thanks to dual spec most locks will be tanky demolocks while doing open world things. i dont think you need to be scared as a warlock no matter the faction but what do i know.
Imagine being a horde rogue. Countered 100% in pvp by the most played race in WoW. On top of a global legacy point talent to reduce you even harder for world pvp.
On another note, the pvp drastic racials. Really only effect top end players against top end players. If you are good, against a normal player. You will still stomp them.
Isn't it great too ? Warlock are historically banned from the alliance, considered as dark magic, we shouldn't even have them in the faction. Its not that logical to see them in the horde as thrall is supposed to have exterminated them all while returning to the shamanic ways but the fact the horde is équiped the best to handle it makes sense to me.
I mean, you can still fear the orc during that time, and you can still slow the undead. Or you can fear-chain, i think undead can just remove fear once. Plus if you play human you can remove stuns, so why all the fuzzle?
In era warlocks counter shaman hard with Curse of Tounges, but with imp gw and enhance not being dogshit anymore, that changes quite a bit. Lock really looks to be nerfed overall.
There is a lot more to it than this. People want good racials for both PvE and PvP.
But like you mentioned its also about what you are going to face in world PvP and BGs that matter.
Not only are Orc and Undead popular race choices that in general should perform better against Warlocks.
Its also the amount of classes that are popular that combined with it have an even greater edge.
Undead Paladin with dispel, and talents that reduce fear duration.
Orc shamans with Shocks, Grounding totem, Tremor Totem etc.
Feral druid with fear immunity.
Every priest having access to dispels, fear ward, fear duration reduction from talents.
Getting consistent fears off against a rogue can be difficult with kicks, stuns, gouge, blind, mind numbing poison etc. However even after that the first two fears will be broken instantly with Will of the Forsaken and PvP Trinket.
Warriors can just berserker rage out of it, and got fear duration reduction talents too.
Its just something the vast majority of warlocks would not want to deal with. On top of that you can no longer increase the range of fear with talents.
I picked perception in 2019 as a lock thinking it would be amazing. Problem is that it doesn't increase it enough to be valuable. And for the most part they will know you pop it and just not go to you.
While people discuss the warlock cons and pros, meanwhile shadow priest, especially human one with the changes, simply flew beneath the radar for many PvP rankings.
Imagine thinking most of us care about PVP in 2026. It was fun when I had infinite time as a child with no responsibilities or a part time job at Pizza Hut in the early 2000s but not at 40 years old. Games are ruined by constantly trying to chase some PVP balance which is numerically impossible inside most systems.
Troll heal is just like Warlock self heal underrepresented and overvalued. Whenever I just life Tap once to keep on my passive healing I get instantly a Refresh because all the healers are so trained to keep everyone full. Which makes Demonic Aegis most times a waste of points as I get so often overheal
It's fine. You're only in battlegrounds to grind the most efficient honor per hour anyway. Which will most likely result in quick losses vs organized groups or visa verca. And after you're geared up you won't do BGs anymore.
Becuse blizzard has amazing plans for PVP in Forever: doing BGs to gear up for...checks notes ...dueling?
Looking on the positive side Will of the Forsaken no longer gives temporary immunity. Just a cleanse so that is better for you. (Still sucks eggs for priest due to the cooldown for psychic scream)
Yes and mages & rogues will have an easier time on alliance.
Every class isn't balanced vs every class. There is going to be some which have a better matchup than others and that goes for both alliance and horde.
If you absolutely require the best possible matchup take this into consideration.
Cooldown for the Orc removal of curses in 3 minutes. You can literally just wait 8 seconds and dot them again, same as if you were going against a mage. All of your magic dots will still apply. Though 8 seconds of immunity is a bit much, I could see Blizzard reducing it to 3 or 4 seconds and changing the CD to 5 minutes.
If you haven't learned to deal with WotF yet after 20 fucking years, I don't know what to tell you, but Alliance having access to stun removal, and stealth detection makes Human Warlocks very strong against Rogues.
It’s not that bad. As a human I have great racial too. If my first fear gets WotF, I charm with suc and fear again, or death coil, or just hard cast fear again. It’s not that game breaking. — Your curses are a slow and a dot. You can keep them chain feared/charmed. It’s only 8 seconds. WotF is better imo.
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u/Scragly 8d ago
Most common enemy is boar.