I'll just leave this here...

http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/leveling-data-on-warlocks-is-worse-than-i-thought/

I play a warlock and I honestly don't know where the whole 'we never get anything nice" and "just like always, we get something awesome and they take it from us" type responses are coming from. I mentioned tonight to a guildie that the lock population is starting to sound a whole lot like paladins.....

Statistically locks are one of the least played classes, something that is evident right through the leveling process (the original cynwise blog plus follow up on the lvling numbers is well worth reading). PvE and PvP are both solidly performing, but the class itself is fairly unpopulated.

There are design flaws in my opinion - things like pets being tied specifically to specs. Our destro lock can't provide the int buff from the fel hunter, if we don't have a mage in the raid, without seriously gimping his dps, because inbuilt in the destro talents is a dps boost from the imp. I don't believe hunters have that kind of penalty if they bring a different pet for a specific buff.

However, I doesn't feel like the class as a whole has been promised a wealth of things over the years and Blizzard hasn't delivered. So I'm not quite sure where that response is coming from.

Removing HGWT makes me want to beat my head against a wall, since I know from painful experience that summoning ppl individually is a pita, the failure rate on summons is about 1 in 3 because someone can't help but move, and people are lazy sods that will not make the simple effort to get to where they should be outside a raid on time. Im' still bitter about the guy in vanilla that asked for a summons to an ony raid, then went afk for nearly 5 mins without telling anyone. The RL gave the locks hell for not summoning the guy. Yes, I'm still bitter.

My perception (and I'll preface this with saying I only regularly run with one person that plays a warlock, and his warlock isn't his raiding main) is that it's the flavor of the class that people don't like? I'll tell you that I rolled a Warlock Banker, with the thought that warlocks interested me nary a bit, so who cared if he chilled in SW at level 1 for years on end, raking in the gold?

That said, I've started playing him in my down time (all the way to twenty so far, boo-yah!), and I don't really have any objections to the play style so far.

Speaking from Shadow Priest experience, I personally find managing DOTs to be a bit of a PITA and not particularly fun, but with the right UI tweaks, it's not really that difficult. Clearly I don't have enough practical hands on experience yet to form definitive opinions, but I really feel like the warlock population problem is as much perception as anything else. I'd love to hear more dedicated warlock players' opinions on the matter...

That is the interesting point. Warlocks can be perfectly fine raid members not OP but certainly not underpowered. Yet the incontrivertible facts are that they are underplayed.

It's not that people can't or shouldn't play locks; it's just that they don't.

For the first part of your question, I think it's a combination of multiple reasons for different people why warlocks are the least played class.

Part of the reason is that warlocks are currently one of the most complex classes in the game to play well. And no, I'm not saying that as an elite lock because I'm certainly nowhere near. But I do enjoy the class and its comparative challenges to other classes, although I'm also an admitted altaholic with an 85 of every class so I enjoy a wide variety of playstyles. Sometimes people just want simplicity in their gameplay and when they're having to work a little harder to do comparative damage on their warlock, they get frustrated and go back to classes with easier rotations or the flavor of the month.

I think Blizzard has done a great job in beta of separating the spells into their logical specs. My action bars have a fraction of the spells in Mists than they do in Cataclysm and it really helps solidify the uniqueness of each spec in a way that just feels right, to the point you don't even notice you're missing spells you used to rely on as bread and butter.

Part of it is also DoTs. Things don't blow up right away like they do with other classes, so there isn't that instant gratification they're either expecting or craving. Or they may have already rolled a shadow priest and don't see enough differentiation between the two to learn another class.

Part of the reason is also player mentality that, "OMG, these guys are EVIL," and they can't break themselves away from their real-life views on "demons" to play a video game character that, in their mind, goes against everything they personally believe in. It's similar to what I consider the "Tolkien Alliance" who refuse to even consider playing Horde (1/2 the damn game they're paying for) because of "nasty orcses, precious".

Part of the reason is also fear of being part of the stereotypical warlock perception. It's funny to talk about Hot Topic or locks painting their faces white and cutting themselves, but some people are afraid of being labeled as "part of that group" as if playing a warlock somehow inherently means the person behind the keyboard is emo.

I'm sure there are a ton more reasons but these seem to be some of the biggies.

I think the main problem people have with warlocks is the ramp up time they need for their dps. I used to play a lock as my main, but have since moved on to tanking and now healing for my raid. Locks will always be my favorite dps class as it is the most fun class to play, however, in under ideal circumstances (which is almost every raid fight) a warlocks dps can suffer dramatically. If you can't be within melee range then Demonology is going to be subpar compared to the other 2 specs. If the fight requires heavy movement, if only for a short period, all 3 specs can suffer. Although all 3 specs use DoTs, and affliction itself gets a majority of its damage from the use of DoTs a surprisingly large amount of damage still comes from the filler spells (shadow bolt and incinerate). Destro is probably the best off when it comes to movement, as their most powerful attack (conflag) is instant cast, however it is on a cooldown and won't be up every time movement is required.

I'm not saying this is a justifiable complaint. If I switch my recount to damage done rather than dps I will still be climbing up higher and higher on the charts while the arcane mages drop from #1 to #4 in damage done. However some people look at the arcane mage doing 35k dps and think that the warlock is underpowered in comparison because on the same fight the warlock only pulls 30k, reguardless of the fact that the warlock did more damage done than the arcane mage.

The downside to a DoT based class from a cosmetic standpoint is that while those DoTs are ticking recount continues to calculate your dps, whereas classes that aren't using DoTs (arcane mage) or classes whose application of a instant cast DoT causes initial damage and thus can be spammed to keep the numbers up while moving (boomkin) get to somewhat cheat the meters to keep their numbers up in situations where a warlocks numbers fall behind.

As I said, I find this to be an unjustifiable argument, I would rather have a warlock doing more damage than a mage doing more dps (it seems contradictory but if you use recount rather than skada you will see it happening quite often). It makes players FEEL underpowered, even if they aren't.

With that said, there's also plenty of other points that other groups will complain about in reguards to warlocks. It just so happens that when I personally hear an excuse of why someone doesn't like warlocks I hear the argument that their dps is suboptimal in raiding situations. Personally I've never had this problem, after the initial ramp up which takes about 10 seconds my warlock sails through at #1 in both damage and dps.

Yeah, I never got way they were so unpopular as a whole. Whenever I was in raids back in Wrath it was almost always me (a hunter) and a warlock who competed for top damage. I could almost place bets that if there was a warlock in the party, I would have to double-time to beat them in numbers. (Not that I wouldn't always try to do well, but I must admit the extra competitive edge did me well.)

But as someone who doesn't play warlocks but have tried to (because they look so COOL), it's a number of things of why I don't have one.

The DoT style bores me. Yes, I said it. Its not that its bad, it just feels like I set up the traps and sit back with a ice tea while waiting for whatever it is to just die already. I get that in higher levels it is probably much more involved, but I just can't take it while leveling. Plus, as someone who started with a hunter, there are too many things are are similar yet not to the set up that just rubs me the wrong way, and makes me play like I'm a hunter on it sometimes (which never works).

And then, after learning more of lore is when I started trying out the Warlock, but then RP wise I couldn't get into it. It's just... how stupid/arrogant are you to make a deal with a race of beings that have destroyed planets, that have no real allegiance to you, and who are corrupted by a dark energy that makes them crazier then normal and you expect to be able to walk away unscathed? The tone of the trainers annoyed me, as it was always 'we are SO MUCH better then everyone! Yes, everyone! MWAHAHAHAHAHA.' I could get it if you knew the risks but felt this was the best way to discover a weakness in the Burning Legion/anyone who uses fel magic (or you intended to join them), but it was never that.

I get what could be fun about them, but these aspects just rubbed me the wrong way.

My main is a warlock and I don't agree whatsoever with the high-pitched noises made over datamining from an early beta, and I am hesitantly excited about green fire, although that's less personally important to me as Affliction.

I'm still riding on a nice high because they removed farming soul shards from the game.