Bacon Bits
Hero
I had a great time playing my Pact of the Chain Warlock, and we've had some other very effective Warlocks, too. However, overall Warlock is second only to Sorcerer as my least favorite in terms of play preference (limited spell draw and spells known make Sorcerer unplayable to me), and I think Warlock has the worst overall class design in the game. Yes, even behind Ranger's apalling Favored Enemy/Natural Explorer with Beast Master. That's also a poor design, but I think Warlock's design is worse for the game.
1. While there's a ton of flavor involved with a pact bond, it's essentially always the same flavor. It's not that much more interesting than Cleric's range, and if your class is only interesting when your DM takes time to make it interesting, I don't really think that's very fair. Even if the flavor makes Warlock hooks easier, it's still interesting because the DM made it interesting, and the DM can do that with any character. Warlocks are just easier because the player gets a plate of hooks handed to them at the start of the game. Worse, not every campaign is going to be interested in demon lords, cosmic horrors, fey nobility, or even celestial archons if you're using Xanathar's. That theme just doesn't always fit into the narrative. The class is, essentially, always presented as maximally dark and edgy. Dark and troubled pasts, angst filled anti-heroes, etc. So dark and edgy that you wouldn't look out of place as a WH40K psyker. Just like people didn't like Paladins for being boy scouts, Warlocks similarly run into darkness induced apathy. The class flavor is great for making narratives, but it's better for making a story narrative and not as great for making a cooperative game narrative.
2. The class is heavily reliant on short rests. Not quite as bad as Fighter, but more so than any other class, even Monk. In general, I have come to the conclusion that classes with all or nearly all abilities tied to short rests are a poor design that fundamentally limits the game. 5e has the 6-8 encounters per day and generally low encounter difficulty so that DMs nickel and dime their PCs and slowly chip away at them. This encourages the PCs to take short rests. The problem with that is that it introduces inflexibility into the game. If you're playing at a table where you want less frequent, more difficult encounters that (IMO) more closely matches the encounter design from the previous 40 years of the game, then the Fighter and Warlock will feel more constrained. Both classes have more difficulty keeping up in more difficult encounters because they have a smaller pool of resources. This makes the overall design of the game worse because it's less flexible than prior editions, and I consider this to be the most glaring flaw in the game as a whole. Classes like Cleric, Wizard, Bard, Druid, etc. do short rest refresh abilities much better where they're not the major component of the class.
3. The class is broad, but shallow. It has a lot of abilities that cover a broad range, but you get little diversity once you've selected them. The class basically asks, "Which one-trick pony do you want to play?" Yes, other classes have this issue as well, but none of them quite feels as shallow as the Warlock, partially because the backstory flavor is so deep. Even with several different patrons, the pacts go a long way towards making every Warlock largely feel identical in much the same way that the Cleric subclasses all feel identical. Xanathar's helps a bit, but I don't think it's enough. Having played mine through 10th level, I never felt like I didn't have this problem during play. Indeed, I think it got worse. It doesn't help that so many Invocations say, "You can cast <spell> once using a Warlock spell slot," because all of those are complete garbage.
4. The class has a few very exploitable "builds," for lack of a better term. Devil's Sight + darkness can easily get obnoxious. Eldritch Blast with Agonizing Blast's "on hit" phrasing is pretty absurd in terms of damage, too. And Pact Magic's interaction with multiclassing can also be abused. Because the class abilities scale relatively slowly and it rewards certain "builds" the class seems to pick up everything it needs fairly early, and this makes it very appealing to multiclassing. I would say 90% of the Warlock discussion I see online about Warlocks is about how to multiclass them for optimization purposes. Very few people discussing the class online want to play the class solo until mid-high level, and that strikes me as a major sign that the class is poorly designed. It's either too exploitable or a bit too frontloaded. If the class serves as only a springboard for abilities for other classes, that strikes me as an extremely poor design for a class in a strongly class-based TTRPG like D&D. It would be fine if all classes were like that like d20 Modern, and I'm sure many people prefer full a la carte multiclassing, but in general I prefer a strong class structure that rewards single class play for all classes for D&D.
5. Ludo-narrative dissonance. I've never gotten past the idea that it's a little absurd that a good-aligned party would rely on a character that bound their soul to an archdemon or cosmic horror to be the face of their party. I've never gotten past the idea that it's a little absurd that Warlocks would be capable of multiclassing when they are literally bound to greedy and deceitful higher powers, particularly to classes like Paladin or Cleric, which fairly explicitly bind you to a different set of higher powers. The default class flavor is great, but multiclassing kind of breaks immersion.
1. While there's a ton of flavor involved with a pact bond, it's essentially always the same flavor. It's not that much more interesting than Cleric's range, and if your class is only interesting when your DM takes time to make it interesting, I don't really think that's very fair. Even if the flavor makes Warlock hooks easier, it's still interesting because the DM made it interesting, and the DM can do that with any character. Warlocks are just easier because the player gets a plate of hooks handed to them at the start of the game. Worse, not every campaign is going to be interested in demon lords, cosmic horrors, fey nobility, or even celestial archons if you're using Xanathar's. That theme just doesn't always fit into the narrative. The class is, essentially, always presented as maximally dark and edgy. Dark and troubled pasts, angst filled anti-heroes, etc. So dark and edgy that you wouldn't look out of place as a WH40K psyker. Just like people didn't like Paladins for being boy scouts, Warlocks similarly run into darkness induced apathy. The class flavor is great for making narratives, but it's better for making a story narrative and not as great for making a cooperative game narrative.
2. The class is heavily reliant on short rests. Not quite as bad as Fighter, but more so than any other class, even Monk. In general, I have come to the conclusion that classes with all or nearly all abilities tied to short rests are a poor design that fundamentally limits the game. 5e has the 6-8 encounters per day and generally low encounter difficulty so that DMs nickel and dime their PCs and slowly chip away at them. This encourages the PCs to take short rests. The problem with that is that it introduces inflexibility into the game. If you're playing at a table where you want less frequent, more difficult encounters that (IMO) more closely matches the encounter design from the previous 40 years of the game, then the Fighter and Warlock will feel more constrained. Both classes have more difficulty keeping up in more difficult encounters because they have a smaller pool of resources. This makes the overall design of the game worse because it's less flexible than prior editions, and I consider this to be the most glaring flaw in the game as a whole. Classes like Cleric, Wizard, Bard, Druid, etc. do short rest refresh abilities much better where they're not the major component of the class.
3. The class is broad, but shallow. It has a lot of abilities that cover a broad range, but you get little diversity once you've selected them. The class basically asks, "Which one-trick pony do you want to play?" Yes, other classes have this issue as well, but none of them quite feels as shallow as the Warlock, partially because the backstory flavor is so deep. Even with several different patrons, the pacts go a long way towards making every Warlock largely feel identical in much the same way that the Cleric subclasses all feel identical. Xanathar's helps a bit, but I don't think it's enough. Having played mine through 10th level, I never felt like I didn't have this problem during play. Indeed, I think it got worse. It doesn't help that so many Invocations say, "You can cast <spell> once using a Warlock spell slot," because all of those are complete garbage.
4. The class has a few very exploitable "builds," for lack of a better term. Devil's Sight + darkness can easily get obnoxious. Eldritch Blast with Agonizing Blast's "on hit" phrasing is pretty absurd in terms of damage, too. And Pact Magic's interaction with multiclassing can also be abused. Because the class abilities scale relatively slowly and it rewards certain "builds" the class seems to pick up everything it needs fairly early, and this makes it very appealing to multiclassing. I would say 90% of the Warlock discussion I see online about Warlocks is about how to multiclass them for optimization purposes. Very few people discussing the class online want to play the class solo until mid-high level, and that strikes me as a major sign that the class is poorly designed. It's either too exploitable or a bit too frontloaded. If the class serves as only a springboard for abilities for other classes, that strikes me as an extremely poor design for a class in a strongly class-based TTRPG like D&D. It would be fine if all classes were like that like d20 Modern, and I'm sure many people prefer full a la carte multiclassing, but in general I prefer a strong class structure that rewards single class play for all classes for D&D.
5. Ludo-narrative dissonance. I've never gotten past the idea that it's a little absurd that a good-aligned party would rely on a character that bound their soul to an archdemon or cosmic horror to be the face of their party. I've never gotten past the idea that it's a little absurd that Warlocks would be capable of multiclassing when they are literally bound to greedy and deceitful higher powers, particularly to classes like Paladin or Cleric, which fairly explicitly bind you to a different set of higher powers. The default class flavor is great, but multiclassing kind of breaks immersion.
