Now, personally I don't have a problem with losing in the arena. But usually when I lose, I want it to be because I got out played, or due to my team not playing up to our full potential. That way I at least know that I could do something different, become a better player, and come back and win the next time. What I don't like is when I lose because something is overpowered.

And that is what warlocks are now, they have always been powerful, but the problem has just been getting steadily worse, and here is why.

1) Scaling - Warlocks have the best scaling of survivability in the game, between soul link, demonic embrace, fel stamina and of course fel armor, the reverse MS. Throw in high resilience and the S2 set loaded with armor, and warlocks become a whole new beast in the arena. It is pretty much impossible to burst one down with a semi-competent healer covering them.

2) Fear - The most powerful CC in the game. Not only does it allow you to do damage while your target is under its effect, it also causes the target to run around randomly. If used properly to the warlocks advantage, healers can be feared out of range, or out of line of sight. Fear is one of the very few effects that can be used to force a player out of position, and high end arena is extremely reliant on positioning.

3) Healing - Siphon life and life drain can heal a warlock for ridiculous amounts of health, and deathcoil even restores a respectable chunk of health as well, in addition to its extremely deadly side effect. Throw in healthstones for emergency heals, and you have yourself a regular healing class that often tops the healing meters of pickup group BGs. This really isn't helped by the fact that all of these are modified by fel armor - aka reverse MS, the most powerful self buff in the game. No other DPS class can even pretend to heal himself like a warlock can.

4) Infinite mana - Warlocks are the only caster that gets a way to return mana to themselves. Everyone else has a finite mana bar, and the only way to return it involves getting out of combat (8 seconds) and drinking (more time used). Drinking is also easily prevented and interrupted. To make things worse, warlocks get the ability to...

5) Drain mana - Only 3 classes get the chance to directly affect another classes mana bar, and of course warlocks had to be one of them. Coincidentally, mana drain is the most difficult to counter, since it instant cast and goes through walls. If you use an interrupt to stop it, that is one less interrupt you have to use on their healer.

6) Felhunter - With the appropriate talent spec, this little guy is practically impossible to kill in small scale PvP. Caster classes can forget about it, melee classes are equally screwed by his debuff, and if a rogue breaks off from the warlock they are just asking to be chain feared to death. Left alone, the felhunter can completely dominate a healing class. He strips buffs, while self healing damage that was split to him via soul link, and spell lock is probably the most powerful interrupt in the entire game. Most importantly, the felhunter can 100% guaranteed prevent the healer from sitting down to drink, and he even does some respectable damage that has to be healed through. Micromanaged properly, the felhunter is hands down one of the most dangerous opponents in the arena - and there is a reason why people focus fire him in 5v5 arena. Even without micromanagement, the felhunter can be extremely annoying.

7) DoTs - Yes, the age old QQ, DoTs scale extremely well compared to other spells, aren't affected by resilience (yet), can be applied to multiple targets for extremely high sustained DPS, and continue to deal damage while the warlock is occupied with other tasks - such as CCing the crap out of your healer. My only consolation is that cookie cutter SL/siphon spec doesn't have UA, and gets dominated by dispellers. Unfortunately only 2/9 classes can defensively dispel with any regularity, and only one can dispel faster than the warlock can debuff.

So, you may ask, what is it that sparked this random outburst of hate towards warlocks. Well, if you really must know, my restoration druid/rogue team just lost a large number of games to warlock/healer teams. It wasn't that we were outplayed or anything, no, I have seen well played warlocks and I don't mind losing to a skilled player. But in these cases my rogue just simply couldn't kill the warlock. He simply has too much HP, resilience, self healing, and kiting ability. Nothing works, my rogue just eventually gets chain feared and kited, and that is the end of it.

These warlocks were, in fact, extremely terrible players to be quite honest. They didn't micro manage their pets, they didn't have very good timing, and more often than not they would just run around, spam dots, and chain fear/drain tank my rogue - what can you do about that? They even let my rogue get back in melee range for some reason, instead of doing proper CoEx kiting. But it didn't matter, because they still won, probably by rolling their face on the keyboard or teaching their pet chimp to press buttons. They were just decked out in PvP gear from head to toe, with ridiculous amounts of survivability, and there was no way to get through it. It was simply impossible to keep the healer preoccupied long enough for my rogue to kill the warlock, or even the felhunter - which we ended up trying, and failing at too. How much skill can it possibly take to just run around in circles spamming 12345 tab, with the occaisonal fear or life drain thrown in?

Now, all of this would be fine and dandy if rogues were not supposed to be the counter to warlocks (and casters in general). I have been beaten by terrible warrior/paladin combos, and to a certain extent I can live with that because they are the rock to our scissors, and I know paper will come and give them a good walloping for us in return. But when paper starts beating up scissors, then I have a problem. It would seem that the only hard counter left to warlocks is... more warlocks. Or shadow resistance gear. When scissors closes up shop and has to hit up the auction house to buy some cheese to fight paper, something is wrong with the game. Something needs to be changed. And that is the end of my rant.

Well articulated, well outlined post. Unfortunately it's nothing more than a "warlocks are overpowered" rant. These forums aren't for rants.