How useful would the succubus be against warr / pally? Just leave her invisible parked off somewhere she can be in LOS *most* of the time, then save her seduce for when the tongues'd pally is going to heal. Though I guess he'd have BoSac on the warrior - but even then the seduce landing mechanic acts as a spell interrupt. She's got a 1.5 sec cast, is on a separate GCD and you could force the warrior to go back and attack it, or force the pally to stun it to heal (what they have to do w/ felhunters anyway). Kinda seems like it would put them on the defensive.

I was looking at Bibdy's build as I'm expecting him to comment here. He seems to be UA / Fel Dom. Interesting build no one has mentioned so far. I assume it starts by charging into the enemy with a sacced VW on - felhunter being the functional pet after that? Fel dom and sac if you get in trouble again?

In 2v2 the VW shield may provide as much damage prevention as SL would have, while retaining UA and denying rage ...

Basically the way i see it. Demo and affliction are both viable but in many respects are like playing a different class. warlocks can lock down other warlocks and make many healers and hybrids cry. The primary disadvantage of the warlock is many teams are focusing on the strongest dps/cc danger first and burning them down. Your a safer assist train target then a double ice block mage.

Oh and with regard to the succubus, most teams i know fear the felpuppy more then the succubus. If you pull a warlock vs you they will just banish your pet then ream you. The succubus can be CCed and killed really easily. The felpuppy is basically hard to make any spell land upon and really really ticks off most healers. Anything that keeps a paladin or priest busy is probably your happy place. Also, I think a paladin can remove seduce?

VW shield can unfortunately be purged (or stolen teeheehee), which is my only misgiving about the VW sacrifice build. I do see the logic behind it and I can definitetly see shadowburn being a bit overrated when, with this build, it is essentially an 11 point talent...

I'd go CoW over CoX on warriors. If a warrior is attacking someone, they have them hamstringed, and if they need to move large distances they use intercept. Rogues I put CoA on for some damage, but don't dare to it to warriors for fear of giving them more rage.

I personally find destruction does OK in 3v3s where I'm with a paladin and rogue - the rogue is geared for damage, not survivability. Between his and my burst we're usually able to drop people quickly, and I usually end up being the primary target for opposing DPS, giving me plenty of backlash procs to throw instant incinerates. I have 11.2k HP and 225 resil which seems to be enough for that bracket as long as I don't have both a MS warrior and rogue on me.

In 5v5 we add a druid and warrior to our 3v3 team, but we struggle a lot because our warrior is prot spec. While she's able to disrupt people well between shield bash silences and concussive blows, it puts me in the role of primary DPS rather than CC/interruption/off-DPS. Destruction gives me the burst damage I need for this, but it lacks the survivability of soul link. Now that I have much better arena gear this isn't quite as much of an issue, but I'm still very vulnerable to focus fire by melee. We also have a hard time protecting our druid, but that's a different issue.

Well, the only time I'd think about pulling out a succubus is against a paladin / warrior as their pvp trinkets can't handle it, and with CoT on a paladin you could keep interrupting his heals with 1.5 sec seduces as long as her mana would hold out. Basically forcing him to do something about it, or call back his warrior to deal with her.

Edit: Also, the only way a paladin can remove seduce off himself is to have BoSac on the warrior, or bubble. However, the seduce would primarily be used to straight up stop his spell casting, as opposed to the spell pushback her dmg attacks would cause. Assuming it doens't get resisted of course.

You wouldn't be on a warrior / paladin 2v2 though :P

I'm seriously -only- talking about that match up.

I can't see how all these warlocks are saying "I get burnt down in 5 seconds". I run with a 7/43/11 warlock, with a touch under 12k unbuffed and about 275 resilience. He can tank anything. I remember when we were doing 3s, in losing games, I'd be dead, priest dead, and their full 3 members would take a good 30 seconds to kill him while just standing there waiting to die. He's a beast.
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...is&n=Sortilege
His armory, but he's wearing PvE gear as of right now.

In 5s, I always pray they try to train on him. It's practically a free win. Between SL absorbing 20% of all damage taken, and Fel Armour helping counteract MS, it just shifts the mana war into our favour. The biggest fear is if they assist on the Felhound, but in that case he just FDs a Felguard out and there's no way they're killing that. A warlock's primary focus is to survive, and to CC. With tongues instant, and fear being 100% uninterruptable from gloves + conc aura, it doesn't even matter if they're beating on him, it doesn't hurt much.

Earlier in the thread, a warlock mentioned dying in 5 seconds with SL and 15,000hp and I just don't believe it. Even 3 AP fire mages would need ideal conditions to set up something like that.

Oh, my experience comes from a mix of 2000-2100 3v3 and 5v5, and starting last week, 2500+ 5v5.

Warrior/Paladin will have the warrior drop a succubus before it has any meaningful impact. It really just can't survive at all.

Maybe if seduce mechanics weren't as terrible as they currently are you could feldom one out and get a long cc late in the game on the paladin, but it just doesn't work currently.

I'd have to pay closer attention to the Warlocks that we play against, but most of the SL ones with 10,000-11,000 health aren't that bad, AE taunting pets helps though. The ones I really hate to deal with is when they start out with sac and then summon it again...since it basically kills the rage I get and have to rely on a Purge or the Rogue burning it.

In 2vs2, you're going to have combos that you can't beat anyway just have to move on at a certain point.

While 5 seconds is an exaggeration, so (I think) is the 30. In 5's Ill run around with say 15k buffed (but only 105 resil), I will be the target of the first round of focus fire, and I can stay up for a little bit, but if there's a rogue on me, I just stand there like a sack of shit getting only 1-2 instants off between chain interrupts. It's pretty ridiculous.

However it's when you get a rogue and MS/DW warrior on you, that's when you fall over with quickness (still taking approx 10 sec).

In smaller scale stuff I can just tank whomever though, even at my crappy resilience. My 3's healer is pretty damn good at keeping people up under pressure. And regardless of whether I'm being stunlocked, our rogue is going to be ripping someones face up, with my felhunter on his targets healer.

So, I think the resilience is a larger component of the 5's game for warlocks, but it's still a pretty "soft" target in terms of you're not going to have to deal with a CLoS/Vanish or double ice block or something.

I guess you haven't read any of my other posts, nor have you looked at my arena rating.

Nothing about my gear or my rating should make you think I'm "serious" about arena. I was making a point that *at even* my level of gear (implicit acknowedgement that my gear is shitty), i can still stay up OK vs a rogue or warrior. However when both get on me, I'm dead.

I run the 24/37 build and am sitting quite comfortably in the 2200+ rating range. The spec is all about maximum survivability in 2v2s. Im paired with a mage (so no healing) and am generally the one being focused. The whole aim of the build in this combo is to survive long enough to help CC the healers, dot the focus target and survive long enough.
The amount of time you can last with SL and siphon life in 2v2 is... well, long
Also 1 point in shadow embrace means:
Curse, corruption, siphon life, shadow embace = 4 affliction debuffs on your target and hence 20% more healing from drain life. Add to that 26% healing from imp fel armour.
Most classes will interrupt your drain life, as the spell effect stands out so badly. But if you time it well, or even just get it off for 2-3 seconds it heals for well over 400+ hp per second with better then average gear.


Also for those mentioning shadowburn is basically a pre-req for arena. Its a valid comment, but it heavily depends on which arena format you are in, your team combo, and how heavily your team depends on you adding burst dps.
Since im paired with a mage in 2v2s my role in terms of dps is less important then if i were to be paired with a healer. Sure shadowburn would help, but as i have highlighted the 24/37 spec helps me survive a great deal longer.

Also as others have said, shadowburn is effectively a 11 point talent, as in my personal opinion any warlock that uses shadowbolt in a fashion to benefit from the 10 talent point getting to shadowburn (i.e. spamming SBs) is a warlock that isnt using his class to its full/proper potential.


As i have already said, im paired with a mage and we are 2200+. Also i believe the current top 2v2 bloodlust team is a warlock + mage.
Yes its true, if you play a healer team around a pillar you will lose more often then not. So... dont fight around a pillar? Yes this is easier said then done but it is possible. The moment a healer goes out in the open it should be more then easy for one of you to either poly or fear the healer.



edit: all that being said im still planning on a 40+/feldom spec once i believe i have enough resilience to justify losing SL.

While I agree with the majority of your points, shadowburn is not an 11 point talent as it makes immolate a good option to use in pvp, and allows you to do some damage with bloodlusted shadowbolts if left alone for a bit.

The screenshot i posted was above of 2 deathwished warriors and a fear warded enhancement shaman. That plus windfury totem and bloodlust and I died in 3 seconds, just after the intercept stun (in which i hit a healthstone and howl since I was trying to put pressure on their paladin). The one that resisted the howl? Their paladin. That setup can easily to 20 or 25 k damage in the span of 5 seconds. This is a very common makeup in our battlegroup, and we are at 1750 ish rating because we got lucky with matchups against bad teams this week.

If you aren't getting focused down that fast then the people in your battlegroup haven't yet learned how. Melee utterly dominates, they aren't limited by mana and silly things like spell interrupts and pushbacks like we are. All they have to do is bring a priest to mass dispel the other teams bop really.

And i wasn't SL at the time, I was full affliction at the time. I wouldn't have made much difference, especially against that team.

This is something I've been thinking about very recently. How useful is Drain Mana in 5vs5? Specifically if you're playing the 'disruption' role. I haven't tried it out yet since my team only plays once a week.

@obsolete: how do you cope with defensive dispell without UA? would you reccomend this build even if partnering with a healer?

I've used drain mana pretty effectively in 2v2, its a much easier format to establish control and go after an alternate win condition. Putting a guy oom in 2v2 is generally more effective than in 5v5 also because he's half the team and he probably won't have mage water or if he does my pet can keep him in combat.

Not that I've never used drain mana in 5v5, but its more of a case where at the end of the game, after the priest does the real mana burning, I can snag his last 600 mana in a couple ticks to prevent a comeback.

There is too much going on at the start of a match to start draining mana. People are busy purging buffs, gettings ccs down, and there's usually a mana burn war going on between the priests. In 1.5 seconds I have the option to: Apply tongues to someone, Fear someone, apply a UA to someone, or drain 300 mana from someone. It's just not worth the time when people are at a full mana pool. When they are down to 1k mana it's a different story.

Priests just do it so much better at this point. A bloodlusted manaburn will do the same ammount in ~1.4 seconds as my 5 second channel, not to mention it does damage as well.
Maybe the haste mechanics to channels or drain mana scaling will change this in the future.

I haven't done much arena wise yet, mainly due to the fact that I was Prot-specced because we needed tanks. I've never felt less efficient in pvp before. Now that we are finally working on SSC however, I see pretty much how worthless a prot pally is in terms of actual 25 man raid contributions and re-specced to holy. (I strongly wish this wasn't the case, but I'm a realist, and it is).

However, i've done a few arena matches from week to week and found that even though a decent warlock can dps down my team, Its never a harder match than when the lock puts the DPS desire on the back burner and focuses on CCing. Its amazing how many different targets a good warlock can really take out of commission at once.

Also: Hi Vazu... long time no chat. You should log onto your warrior sometime and mess around.

As i said im paired with a mage and more often then not we manage to effectively keep the healer (which is likewise the dispeller) CC'd while we dps the other target. Hence my dots don't get removed off the focus target.
Should we have problems keeping the healer/dispeller CC'd then i find that the time they spend dispelling is time (and mana) they waste not healing their partner who is being zerged by my mage partner.
My whole role in the team is to serve as a distraction, CC'er and punching bag.

In terms of pairing with a healer, i wouldn't recommend the spec. Unless you plan on using a very attrition based strategy (basically outlasting your opponents in a long fight) then there is a lot more dependance on you dealing damage. As i have mentioned, if my dots get removed then my mage partner is still dealing heavy damage and all the healer is doing is wasting time not healing. Whereas partnered with a healer, dispelling would effectively remove all the dps on the target.

Just my 2 cents. I have never partnered with a healer so i can only speculate, what the spec would be like, with respect to partnering with one.

I am in a 5v5 team and so far the weakest link on the team. Most fights I get one casted spell and 2 -3 instants before I am dead. In my PvP gear I am still under 200 resilience though. I am expecting to hit 200 in the next few weeks. I started out as affliction and had a dismal record. The only time I was really happy about affliction was when I was the last person on my team and took out the other teams priest and pally solo with UA and dots loaded up. Currently I am trying out Destruction. Shadowfury and backlash are phenomenal while being focus fired. Shadowfury is great for teams that like to hide, Drop a shadowfury around the corner on top of them and charge in for some general confusion. I have gone from a 40% win record to 50% win record since switching to destro. I suspect i will top out in the low 60% range. I think a locks build depends on the focus of their team. If you are a heavy CC team affliction. If you are a heavy healer team demo, if you are a burst DPS group, destro at least for 5vs5. In the smaller scale arenas affliction is probably more universally useful.