Vazu

Purpose:
- Discuss strengths and weakness of our class in all three arena PVP brackets.
- Post specs and team makeups.
- Share functional macros and mods specific to arena PVP for Warlocks.
- Discuss strategy. What is our role? How does your 5v5 team protect you?

My current spec is 5, 45, 11

I'm part of three teams.

2v2: SL Warlock/Paladin
3v3: Paladin/Warrior anchors (Shaman/Mage/Warlock) <-- One of these off the bench.
5v5: Warlock x2 (UA / SL), shadow Priest, Mage x2 (Both are AP/Pyro), Paladin x2

2v2
We struggle with Rogue/Priest and some Warrior/Paladin teams.

Rogue/Priest: Rogues have the ability to completely lock me down. The game turns into a mana war. My Paladin healer plays tricks with LOS, to keep the Priest (who has Tongues + Felguard beating on him) from mana burning. I keep the Rogue dotted with CoA and Shadowburn whenever it's up. I spam Corruption on both the Priest and Rogue, hoping that if the Priest stops to dispel, he's not mana burning and my Paladin can heal safely. I try and save Deathcoil on the Rogue for post-bubble/trinket fears on my Paladin and Blind. You might wonder why I don't use a Felhunter for these games. We tried that, but found the Felguard to put more pressure on the Priest to heal two people. Frenzy x10 + Blessing of Might on a Felguard with unlimited mana to Cleave (2/3 Mana Feed) is pretty brutal on cloth.

Warrior/Paladin: Careful crowd control here. All of the games we win here end up with the Warrior dying and his Paladin healer at 60-70% mana. I start with a Felhunter on the Pally, but strip Might off the Warrior first. I then leave it on the Paladin and auto-Devour Magic BoW repeatedly. Tongues on the Paladin at all times. Warrior Pummel only lasts 4 seconds and most attack very slowly with crafted BS weapons. Combined with Conc. Aura + 50% Fear PVP gloves, I can Fear uninterrupted. In games we win, the Warrior ends up just melting to death. Overall, the strategy is simply to not allow the Paladin to stop and FoL. Everything revolves around keeping him CC'd after the initial blown bubble. In games we lose, the Warrior is very good at using Intercept / Pummel / IS to keep my Paladin under control. Some of the better teams will even drag my Felhunter out of LoS and the Warrior will Intervene his Paladin and assist on the Felhunter. Our losses here depend on how good the Warrior is at multi-tasking, and not just DPS'ing me.

3v3
TBC when I think about our games some more. This is the bracket I rely on most (right now) for arena rating.

5v5
This is a relatively new team, and we're working on well timed assisting to get someone down quickly. We only run 1 Paladin healer in this group + 4 people in cloth. With so many of the 5v5s out there running 2 Warriors, it's imperative that we get someone down quickly to even things up some. Warriors combined with Paladin babysitters are so incredibly dominant in this bracket, but they are very, very susceptible to tons of front-loaded magic DPS. Toss a Curse of Elements on one of them + 2 AP/Pyro Mages (+10% taken in Berserker stance) and insta-gibbing one of them at ~ 60-70% health is pretty common. Teams adapt. We can usually farm 1-2 wins before they realize what we're doing. We're getting better at choosing a new target and not showing our hand. Not letting them know who will be assisted on at any moment. We're also working harder to protect our UA Warlock. He concentrates on their healers, and puts pressure on them to heal a fully dotted raid. Anyway, more to come here. As I said, we're still new to this as a group of PVPers. Different group makeups (UA Warlock, SL Warlock, shadow Priest, Mage, Paladin) are in the works too.

Some requested feedback on Destruction as a spec for Warlock arena PVP
If you are specc'd deep enough to have Shadowfury, what teams are you part of? How succesful are your teams? How do you survive and what weaknesses do you notice in stationary DPS? Early in the season, I tried it in my 2v2. I was a raiding Destruction PVE Warlock build pre-BC arenas. It just lacks way too much survivability and the two biggest upsides of Affliction (UA) and Demonology (SL). Backlash is nice, but without that proc and limited mobility, it just seemed very gimp. I'm curious to hear if anyone has had success (2k+ rated team) with a minimum 41 Destro build.

 

Zoner

I've tried every spec, they all fail in various ways.

Destruction is abolutely horrible in the arena, which makes me rather sad considering its always been considered 'the real pvp spec' and by far my favorite tree. Basically line of sight, lack of a true range advantage, and mana consumption in a finite mana environment make it really bad. Its only good against shadow priests really, and only because of nether protection. Basically the more people there are aware of you the less destruction works at all.

Affliction is considerably better but in many ways is only good against 2v2 and 3v3 teams without healers, since you can melt them all at once. It pairs up with a paladin ok for concentration aura stacked with fel concentration for drain life (which is useful against mortal strikes somewhat, at least until they pummel you). The dispel resistance is nice, but in the presence of healing its pretty worthless. I was in a 3v3 with shadow priest, myself, and a paladin against 2 rogues and a priest. I got onto the platform next to the bridge and dotted up all the rogues until CLOS, fully dotted them again when that passed, kept a full suite of dots on the priest. Our shadow priest went OOM killing their priest, we lost, even after me having done about 75000 damage. The only good thing about affliction is its a good spec to play the attrition game when your opposing team's dps is made up of a mage or mages; at least in the 3v3 bracket.

Demonology is a bit weird. It has none of the punch of destruction or the dispel protection of affliction. All for what amouts to more health. Good against some teams (3v3 vs caster dps), useless against others (3v3 vs melee dps). Just as useful as the other specs in 5v5 (i.e. not very) since the difference between the specs in how long it takes to die is less than a second.

As for 3v3, good teams will focus fire my felhunter first thing, so I can't devour things like sheep or hammer of justice off our paladin. If the team is smart enough to do that they pretty much win the match.

5v5? I merely pray I get matched up against a bad team, because even the average ones can kill me in just about any spec in about 4 or 5 seconds (* from 15000 hp) once the match gets going. I doubt we will ever break out past 1750 rating without adding more paladins and removing myself and/or the druid on the team.

 

Keline

We actually got 2k rating with just one paladin in the team and a warlock who respecced every week for something else.
I personally considered SL+ 30 something else best as, unlike the felguard, the felhunter isn't a huge "I have SL" sign, so we actually had a decent tank while the rest of the team killed people.

 

• Amera

I'm really confused how people think warlocks are a liability in 5v5. The #1 team in our battlegroup from Team Ice (who was #2 in the country as of a few weeks ago) runs a warlock all the time, and he dominates games. This is also the case with several other teams in the bracket. They tend to all be soul link and just stack stamina/resilience to tank when needed. Many that I've seen don't even DPS besides a few dots - they just chase around the paladin(s) and remove them from the game for everything but 12 seconds.

People complain about paladins, but good warlocks just dominate healers. I think this misconception about warlocks being poor is rooted in many of the complaints about priests, druids, and whatnot. You want to do job X, but you are amazing at job Y. In this case, I don't think I've ever seen an effective "DPS" warlock in 5v5 - they are crowd control.

 

Sumie

Yup, it's also why I feel affliction is the best group PvP spec atm. You can dot up your target, and protect it with UA at the start of the fight, then work on crowd control. And once I do spell-lock/fear a healer, I can turn to help out against the focus-fired target with deathcoil/shadowburn and the occasional nightfall proc. Another instant AOE fear for your group can be a lifesaver as well.

 

Frieza

I pvped with a 7/43/11 till i was able to reach 11k unbuffed with a mix of gladiator, epic pvp items and the blu set ... then i respecced 43/7/11 and i feel i have more utilities to bring other than the sheer power of a felguard build ... UA, Coex, instant Hot are valuable tools in every bracket imho.

I'm tempted to try a 24/37/0 for Coex, Syphon Life, Demonic Resiliance, Demonic Knowledge and Soul Link. Does anyone reading those forums tried a build like this? You have good mitigation, instant summon, Coex to kite, Syphon Life to regain some life but you lack any kind of controlled burst damage and UA to protect your dots.

 

• Maligne

I wouldn't recommend any build without Shadowburn. I did some 2v2's with a lock who's close to the spec you mentioned, and having *no* burst except for maybe a lucky nightfall proc sucks pretty bad. We lost quite a few games because the priest was free to run behind a pillar and heal after being at < 300 health for a few seconds.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

• Deris

I'm currently at 2100+ rating for 2v2 with an afflic lock - the only teams that give us problems based purely on class is Priest/Rogue or Priest/Warrior - we just don't have the burst to burn down a Priest and I invariably end up mana burned. Just one or two puts a hurt on my mana pool as the lock tries to deal with MS or a Rogue. We're still slightly undergeared in that we only have 3 pieces of arena gear, and we want to make a serious run at top 10 hopefully once we pick up the honor based resil gear/trinkets.

Shadowburn makes a huge difference, and I wouldn't trade CoEx for anything in the world. When we pull Blade's Edge vs. anything with melee we dominate (save devour for BoFreedom) since the melee can't touch us barring a rogue blowing CoS or Imp Sprint - which still gives the lock lead time to kite. Nagrand we don't do as well vs. Warrior/Rogue Priest duos, but we can still pull off a W more often than not.

Rogues seem to be the bane of UA Locks.. really hate them.

We've tried experimenting with a Succubus, but she just dies too damn fast. She has however worked in the past to force an early bubble vs. a Paladin, and got one super good interrupt off vs a Priest that cost the opposing team the game.

 

• Fogbug

My team's just popped above 2000 in the last week, and for most of our run we've gone with the same basic setup - arms war/fury war/shaman/paladin/misc, with "misc" being either a resto druid, an affliction lock or an additional shaman. all 3 worked pretty well up until the 1900's, but now we lose points every time I slot the lock in. we'd probably be at 2100+ otherwise

I don't think it's purely a matter of him being a bad class or a bad player, though. our team just isn't set up for CC, and everyone needs to be able to survive extended damage. The only time we have significant CC is when the druid plays, and he's never in the same games as the warlock

 

Lazak

I currently play in all 3 brackets and wanted to share my input.

2v2:
I started out by duoing with a mage. And althou this combo has some strong points in excessive CC, it doesnt work at the higher levels. Any healer that uses LoS around pillars can more or less shut us down, It becomes almost impossible to CC the healer and we are on a clock since we cannot heal ourselves. We got it to 1800-1900 rating before we stopped playing that combo.
After that we added a Warrior and a Paladin to the team and i had a great deal of succes with Paladin/Warlock. At this time i was Soul link/Felguard . Paladin/Warlock and Paladin/Warrior got the team to 21** rating.

Since then i have left to play with another friend, so now im in a 2 man team with a shaman.
I am now Affliction specced and we are doing great with a score of 32-3atm. We have meet the rank 1 team (paladin, warrior) once and we got a win there.

Against Paladin/Warrior we dot up the warrior and once he is down to 60-70% and the paladin shield has been used, we call a nuke on TS: Earth Shock, Spell Lock, Earth Shock, Fear, Earth shock on top of a CoT is usually enough time, for me to kill the warrior.

Against other healer/dps combos we either try the same nuke tactic or we outlast them by me using Drain mana + Dark pact.
We are nearing 2050 rating and climbing steadily.

3v3:
Here i play with the same Mage, Paladin, Warrior, Shaman from the 2v2 teams and we are hovering around 2100 rating.
I mostly Dot up and then use CC's on the other team. We find that we can mostly beat all other combos by outlasting them.
Our best lineup is probably our Warrior, Paladin, Warlock, where we have only meet 1 team we couldnt beat. A team in our battlegroup that plays Holy Priest, Shadow Priest, Affliction Warlock.
They can simply dot up the Warrior and then they silence/fear the paladin.
He cannot dispell because of Unstable Affliction and he cannot outheal all the ticking dots, especially not when they CC him with Silence and fear.
If anyone has any advice regarding this setup, id like to hear it.

5v5
I have had problems finding my spot in this bracket. We normally run a 2 Healer 2 Dps and warlock setup.
I started out by being the weakest link, simply because i had no defense against being focussed. A soul link spec helped there, but it limited my options in 5v5.
Since then i have gathered my pvp gear and i now have 11.500 unbuffed HP and 312 Resilience.
I am now back in an Affliction spec, where i feel i do so much more for the team.

We started out by being 9 ppl on the team, which lead to using a different team each week. And althou we all 9 got arenapts, our rating was never stable.
Currently we run a Paladin, Druid, Warrior, Mage, Warlock setup and we are learning how this setup works best.

 

subscience

How valuable do you find your Fury Warrior? Would that same Warrior bring more to the table if he were Deep Thunder/Arms? I'm curious because we have a 2nd Warrior on our team who re-specs to Arms when we PvP, but otherwise is a Fury DPS Warrior for raids. It would be interesting to know how Fury performs.

 

Solipse

Quoting this for truth.

If your strength in the arena is X, you need to do X. I've thus far seen members of every class play outstandingly enough that they have made their team... warlocks are no exception. The ones who run in chaining shadowbolt, not moving, not CC'ing are the ones that get rolled over.

The ones who kite around LoS playing healer control, focus on mana draining and really locking me/our shaman down are the ones that completely destroy us. Play to your strengths.

 

niska

One of the top 2v2 teams in our group is a lock with that spec and a paladin. I imagine that it makes for kiting/outlast fights, though.

 

jubelio

Yeah I dont know what's happened, but I used to be able to survive bursts. Now I take 5-10 seconds to hang back and wait for the rest of the group to engage and still get burnt down 4 times out of 5. It could have to do with the fact that I used to cc, but we changed the strat to me assisting and dpsing primarily.

 

• probiscus

People *really* hate warlocks. Given that, in any PvP function, if you ignore them, they *will* eat your lunch. Plus we're squishy (relatively speaking). It's basically the easiest class in the game to FF down b/c once we've got a good melee on us, it's game over. Rogues are absolutely retarded in this respect. God help us if they have imp kick as well.

Thunderfork: Is it fair to assume the gear in your armory right now is your PvE stuff?

Personally I'm waiting for a solid 200+ resilience (pref'd 250+) and approx 13K unbuffed before I even think of spec'ing out of SL/Punching Bag.

 

• Fogbug

it's tough to say to say, but theoretically his contribution should be a lot better as long as I keep MS on the target (and he assists me when possible :argh: )

overall his performance doesn't seem too different from when he was arms, though

well ideally you should be doing both but I don't know much about warlock pvp. Zibro seems to do really well but his team is better set up for kiting

 

jubelio

yes, my pvp gear puts me at 11k hp/135 resilience. I've opted to take a break from arenas to build up my gear a fair bit.

 

Scrublock

Though Warlocks are certainly often overlooked as an effective arena class (even in 5v5), there are many advantages we offer to each bracket. In my experience the best way for a Warlock to contribute to the team is to debuff the hell out of the other team and cripple their healers, then DPS if needed. I find UA spec is most effective for any arena bracket because it boosts our debuffing potential and can prevent the other team from aggressively dispelling.

2v2

Partnered with a good Dwarf Shadow Priest, this combo can really tear most teams apart. Typically I use the Felhunter for his offensive dispelling abilities, as well as to dispel my Priest. The spell lock is pretty clutch, however it is frequently unreliable due to Talisman of the Breaker and various talent specs healers can get into. Curse of Tounges on the healer is a must, and with UA/full dots on our target the combo acts like a pseudo Mortal Strike because their healing is so crippled they frequently can't keep up with our DPS.

Only weaknesses I've found is to specfic class combos such as any well geared MS Warrior (Especially Undead) and Paladin, Destruction Warlocks/Druids, and two rogues. Our main defenses being Fear based, with all the fear-breaking abilities we are weak to effective snaring/stunning.

3v3

We roll with Warlock/Shadow Priest/Rogue offering excessive debuffing and crowd control as well as the luxury of having the dangerous melee stunned/kited. With our Rogue on the melee targets (typically Warriors/Rogues) this leaves us free to move around to get our dots up and do a little direct damage. Curse of Tounges rapes healers here, and an initial blind forces the Pally to blow his bubble early. One of the main things we need to keep top of is if that Pally bubbles to heal his target our Priest needs to Mass Dispel that shit quick or it could cost us the game due to the fact that we have no healers.

Overall effective comp, although Pally/Warlock/Shadow Priest could prove more useful.

5v5

No secrets here. Even with 13k HP most teams will still focus fire me and burn me down like nothing. Voidwalker sac is almost required in this situation, and a good Pally BoP/Freedom can mean life or death. I play debuffer/secondary DPS, just Curse of Tounges their Priests/Pallies and try to throw UA on our main targets to prevent aggresive dispelling.

Summary

In general, Fear is simply not as effective as it used to be. As a Warlock I'm extremely succeptible to melee classes due to the abundance of Fear counters in the game at this point. Undead Warriors can easily mitigate our fears with WotF, Berserker Rage, and Trinket automatically using up our 3 diminishing returns. Death Coil when properly used can be a game breaker, but as a purely defense oriented ability it just isn't enough to protect you from dying.

 

• probiscus

Well, assuming you can get some EJ guys, just go roll some BGs and get some honor rewards. Between a few of those pieces, unyielding girdle, etc you should be able to break 13K with relative ease.

Below is a link for one of my guildies, it's basically exactly the gear I'm going for.
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/?#...lrogg&n=Mizzle

However, even with SL with that much resil, our healers talk about how much of a chore it is to keep him up in some of the 5's games.

 

jubelio

lockdown can be a full time job against 2-3 healers, and it seems as though everyone in this thread is saying cc > dps.

 

Scrublock

I think it's definitely a play-by-ear situation. Sometimes I think I need to be locking down their healers as much as I can, others straight up raw DPS can overpower their healing if you just throw Curse of Tounges on them.

 

• Fogbug

that's my opinion too - loderunner + me can provide plenty of burst, ideally your first priority should be UA+tongues on the casters then fear on whoever

the problem is that our team setup causes us to take constant damage. so far Werebeef just seems to make a better 5th member because he can provide both healing and awesome unbreakable CC