Too Much Of Everything: How Warlock Became The Degenerate Class

Having tons of cheap card draw options, extremely mana-efficient heals, and the ultimate resource-cheating option in Tamsin Roame, there’s little Warlock can’t do right now in terms of non-interactive combo finishers. How did we get here, and is there a way out?

Tamsin’s Troubles

Of all the Questlines causing troubles in United in Stormwind, Warlock had a special sort of disgusting nature for those interested in playing slower archetypes. Though it was initially Mages who set the world on fire (and frost, and arcane), Warlocks prevailed through the subsequent round of nerfs and proceeded to create truly depressing play patterns where they’d literally draw their whole deck by turn ten and kill their helpless opponent just with fatigue damage.

Right now, it’s Humongous Owl and Tamsin's Phylactery that’s enabling nasty unavoidable OTK play patterns, but the main design concern here is simply how efficient the class’ shell of spell tools has become over time.

First, a combination of cheap and efficient healing (and the added reward for self-damage) makes Life Tap all the more reliable as a tool. This is something that hasn’t traditionally been a part of Warlock’s arsenal: indeed, a quick look at the Classic set features just three health-restoration cards, each woefully inefficient for a reason: Sacrificial Pact was too situational, Drain Life was weak even in 2014 and Siphon Soul is more about removing threats than healing. Indeed, even the Core set doesn’t feature that much in this department: Drain Soul and Siphon Soul are all you get (and maybe, if you squint hard enough, the reworked Lord Jaraxxus).

Mana cheating is also new to Warlock, and they utilize it to devastating effect. (Recruit from KnC, if you count it, was also incredibly strong in the class.) Tamsin Roame once again shows how (0)-cost effects are impossible to balance while Runed Mithril Rod coupled with reliably large hand sizes allow for unmatchable amounts of mana spent on a given turn. Just today, I faced a Warlock who played 16 mana’s worth of cards on turn 8: Humongous Owl, Backfire, Mortal Coil, Mo'arg Artificer, Grimoire of Sacrifice and Drain Soul. I lost my board lead and died soon thereafter.

Worse yet, they didn’t have to sacrifice anything for the privilege. They started the turn with eight cards in hand and 23 hit points: they ended it with seven and 20 respectively, having drawn four new cards in the process. Much like how Ultimate Infestation removed Druids’ punishment for ramping (using cards and therefore running out of resources in hand), Warlocks have no drawback associated with self-damage and healing, drawing fast and chucking out cards.

The addition of Full-Blown Evil has also bolstered their already impressive arsenal of AoE effects, a card that has way too much flexibility for its own good (it compares favorably with Warpath on most boards) and their combo finisher now reliably goes above 30 with just four cards.

Warlocks have rarely had combo decks in the past (which makes sense as their built-in card draw would often make them too efficient at pulling off such strategies, just as we’re seeing now), and the fact that their total damage output has also ramped up considerably also plays a big part in what’s problematic about the current state of the class.

Malylock and More

Though Warlock strategies usually oscillate between Zoo and Handlock (and variations thereof), we’ve seen the occasional combo setup as well. So how did Warlocks burst you down in the past? Well, we originally had Leeroy Jenkins (for a paltry four mana) + Power Overwhelming + Faceless Manipulator for a whopping 20, maybe up to 28 with the 0-cost Soulfires. This, however, required five cards and for you to be able to hold them all back in other advantageous gameplay situations, like copying a huge Taunt to take a board lead.

Darkbomb would eventually become a big part of Malygos-based decks that used them alongside Soulfires and cost reduction from Emperor Thaurissan to set up their finisher. Compare and contrast a 6-mana 5/5 with one-time cost reductions to Runed Mithril Rod and weep.

Actually, that’s about as far as it goes for Combo Warlock archetypes in Standard, and all the tools used in today’s OTK builds have come from recent Standard sets. Wild, of course, has shown a different side of Warlock, with multiple game-breaking archetypes emerging over time: Stealer of Souls was outright banned from the eternal format while decks like SN1P-Lock (featuring SN1P-SN4P and Darkest Hour Warlock would prompt a nerf even from a team so famously reticent to get involved with the balancing of Wild.

Now, the rot has spread to Standard: and who knows, maybe it is on purpose.

A Glimpse of the Future?

In many ways, Warlock’s current state seems to represent what Team 5 views as the optimal gameplay experience these days: shorter matches (in terms of rounds) with the decision-making (with a focus on sequencing and optimization) strictly in the hands of the player acting on the turn. Little to no disruption though, because that is not fun!

There may be four or five cards drawn, and the same amount played on back-to-back turns, stretching and tearing the fabric of what your nominal mana allocation may allow, while the other player is stuck twiddling their thumbs, helplessly watching as ridiculous things happen. Usually, combo decks only get to do so after carefully assembling their key pieces and pulling off their finisher to cap off the match: now, it happens multiple times over, making you unable to attempt anything other than relentless aggression.

In terms of framing expectations, one of the balance goals of Alterac Valley is to make slower strategies more viable. While we don’t want to micromanage exactly which cards are/aren’t allowed to succeed, any changes we make will have that goal for balance softly in mind.

— Celestalon???????? #ABetterABK???? (@Celestalon) December 2, 2021

Celestalon’s gone on record stating that the goal of the new set is to promote slower strategies. It’s early days yet, but with Handbuff Paladin and Quest Warrior topping the charts, that goal seems like a failure – especially because when and if the aggro wave subsets, it isn’t a set of slow archetypes waiting in the wings, but Tamsin and her phylactery. We’re patiently awaiting the balance update to see where the meta heads – hopefully towards a brighter (and slower) future.