portakal

hello everyone,

firstly, really helpful post, thanks to the contributors.

I am (affliction 43/7/11, 11-k hp and 120res) currently doing 2v2 arena with a RL friend (BM Hunter). We're fairly new to the arena, and our tactic is mainly me tanking and controlling the healer, and him taking down the dps'er. It goes fine with priests and druids (probably because our rating is always between 1400 - 1500), but we always have problems with groups of paladin + any dps. I wonder how do you do against these groups, especially paladins + warriors.

thanks in advance.

p.s: I'm also looking for a better spec, but I want to keep dark pact because I'm raiding.

 

Herde

Make sure you use felhunter, dot up the DPS, use your felhunters dispel when you see BoP/BoF and spell-lock when the paladin is casting a bigger heal, which shouldnt be any problem if you keep CoT on the paladin at all times. Also make sure you get the warrior in combat before he charges, and have to waste intercept to get to you. When he intercepts you could have your friend use his pet's stun. Also try bringing the warrior out of line of sight of his healer, which is a very common mistake at lower ratings.

 

jilanea

Noticed that a lot of highly rated affliction lock don't have many points in shadow embrace. To me it seems prety decent for pvp. Is there some weird way the damage is applied, that makes the mitagation bad?
Either way can someone explain why it isn't generally used above 1 point?

 

Dakha

The one point is used for the extra debuff, to buffer the dispels. For pvp, the other 4 points are just generally spent better elsewhere (destro to ruin, demo to SL etc etc)

 

Fearius

Posted in wrong thread.

 

Optimized

As Dakha said 1 point in shadow embrace puts the SE debuff up whenever you cast one of your other DOTs. This does 2 things. It puts an extra debuff on the target which makes it more difficult to dispel crucial debuffs. Take for instance if you put a fear then a siphon life on the target (and thus Shadow Embrace). This puts 3 debuffs for cleanse to potentially hit instead of just fear. Siphon also has little chance of interupting your fear as it does little damage. Also, SE affects improved drain life, counting as another affliction spell on the target upping your drain life/mana by an additional 5% if you have the talent.
In general there are other talents you want to get that have more of an impact than 4% less physical damage.

 

Spidera

Hey guys.
I'm FG lock (7/43/11) and I'm teamed with my friend who's a shadow priest.
We recently passed the 1900 mark (1943 atm I think) and now we're starting to meet some teams with really imba healers.

Our gear is usually somewhat 'weaker' than the teams we face (we started arena only on season 2, and we got no raiding gear at all).

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My question is, if anyone has a setup which resembles ours (our strength lies in bursting enemy team fast), how do you deal with those healers who stay OOS the entire fight? (especially in places where you cannot kite the DPS away from the healer)

 

• frmorrison

A few days ago I speced shadow 21/40.
My question is what should I do about pet sac?
For Raiding sac Succy, for grinding sac Felhunter, and for Battlegrounds sac Voidwalker is what I am doing.

I am unsure what to do in Arenas. For reference I am not on any good teams (nor am I all that great, so my rating is between 1500-1700 in the different brackets). The best answer is spec 27/34, but I am not that serious about Arena (nor are my teammates); the various team makeups are all dps or 4 dps/1 healer.


My initial thought as 21/40 was use the Felhunter and then when its health gets low or I need mana, sac it (3% mana regen per 4 sec). I also could use the VW and if there are melee use him to debuff them then sac him (2% health regen per 4 sec).

 

Gnomeover

Your strat shouldn't be trying to kite the dps away from their healer. Your strat should be kiting and pulling the dps to an area in which the healer has to come out and heal.

 

Spidera

Pff that's what I meant.
Alright, let's say you face a healing priest + hunter in the Loradeon arena. Hunter and priest rush to the tomb, hunter places frost trap.

What do you do? There's no way the hunter will be kited anywhere. They both got range after all...

 

Gnomeover

edit: Sorry this does not apply! Please delete me!

 

Jahardon

CoR v CoE v CoA

Hey guys, I just read all 10 pages of this forum while in class, and I'm inspired to arena more to practice all the new things I just learned... as soon as I get home, that is...

So like, I'm doing 5's with me(lock) holy priest, holy PLD, MS warrior, and a rogue/ice mage switching out.
My question is, since I'm mostly on CC, which curse should i apply that would produce the most damage, with all cases explained?

There was a previous post that CoR does wonders on priest, maybe because that knocks them into negative armor?
This question pertains to the focus target. I'm Affliction spec, so I have Imp CoA. Usually, the warrior does a little more damage then the mage at the end of the game.

 

Trite

So a quick question that I haven't seen addressed. In the popular drain builds (something along the lines of 24/37/0), why is demonic knowledge the consistent choice over shadow mastery? is there a thread somewhere that I missed that had the math behind the two proving DK to be superior? Is there a certain +spell damage level where one becomes obviously superior?

 

Cronjob

The only problem with going full SM is that you would lose DK and DR. Although you could just do the 3 points in SM and keep demonic resillience.

 

Gnomeover

Most people will argue that 3% of SM does not give more dps than the 125-150 spell damage you gain from DK.

Think about it this way:

Lets pretend a warlock has 1000 spell damage.

Corruption will do 900 base. 1900 with spell damage.

Lets pretend DK gives a minimum of 100 spell damage.

Corruption now does 2000.

-----

Again lets assume Corruption will hit for 1900.

3% of 1900 is 57. So your Corruption will hit for 1957.

----

2000 > 1957.

DK > SM

 

Trite

right, and the numbers I worked up supported this for dps-oriented spells (shadowbolt, corruption, etc). but the impact of more spell damage versus a flat modifier is reduced when taking into account drain life is it not?

Here is my thoughts (and it could be completely off):
due to the healing effect, the spell damage bonus granted by the demonic knowledge would be subject to both the 71.43 coefficient and the 50% penalty for being a spell that heals and damages. The 50% penalty is something you don't see in things like SB & corr, so SM would actually scale faster than the spell damage bonus from DK.

In a build that is focusing on drain life and the ability to outlast the opponent, would this make SM more appropriate choice for this build or am I completely off base?



Here is my weak attempt at the math behind this. Not taking into account fel armor or soul siphon. Maybe by seeing the math you can find any errors i've made in my assumptions (for example the order of application of the modifiers). The spreadsheet can be viewed at Google Docs - DK vs SM .

 

Gnomeover

sure if you do nothing but DL get 3/5 SM. However, make no mistake. This spec's damage does not come from DL. It comes from Corruption, Siphon Life, and CoA (some may use immolate). I don't have the math to support this but I can tell you that any respectable warlock will tell you that he/she does not rely on DL as his main source of damage.

 

Trite

of course the actual damage put out by the build isn't primarily Drain Life, but I was just curious if the theorycrafting was correct in that DL scales better with SM than with DK

 

TitanManX

This is my first time posting on these forums, but I've been kinda reading this stuff here and there and have gotten a ton of useful info, but I still feel a little lost as to what I should be doing in my 5s team/spec etc etc. I have 302 resilience, about 11k HP with 997 shadow damage (self-buffed of course with felhunter out).

I think it helps to mention my team is a Marks Hunter/Shadow Priest, Priest, Affliction Lock (myself) and an Elemental Shammy. I think I have my spec right with 43/7/11 it seems to be the build I'm most comfortable about. What should my job be in 5s matches, should I help get the first target down and then help my shadow priest with the mana draining, try to CC the healer with Felhunter/Chain Fear, or just continue to DPS? Seems like there is always a melee class that prevents me from chain fearing so what should I be doing in that situation? I should have a link to my armory in the profile thingy so any suggestions as to what I should be doing would be great! Just some reason I still feel like I'm not doing my job properly.

 

Kcolraw

try speccing unstable affliction too, infinitely better for a spriest partner

21/40 doesn't work for arenas, at all... though if you have to pvp with this, just keep a felhunter out

just use coa on the assist target (dot and forget!) but if it's a caster usually it's still better to use cot


...and about the whole sm vs dk thing, you spam a lot of searing pain with this spec anyway, so you'll want dk

 

Vazu

If it's a Priest you are assisting, and a Rogue or Warrior from your team is on him, Curse of Recklessness all the way. You can't even imagine how painful it is for a caster to have -800 armor and watch their mitigation go from like 20-25% to like 10-15%. Warlocks always get Tongues though, regardless of the situation. It's too easy to get fears off, even with a Warrior in our faces. Pummel, and 2-3 seconds later we just re-cast.

 

Cronjob

Vazu, If the focus target is a warlock would it be better to have CoR on them too? Especially for a SL lock?

 

shiftycent

As an advice thread, I'm looking for some myself

I recently got a warlock to 70, he's mostly in greens currently. What is the best way to go about gearing him for PvP, aside from running BGs until I go insane. I don't know if I should hold out for Season 2 gear or just buy Season 1 gear when I can afford it, skipping S2 altogether (assuming by the time I get my full S1 gear, it'll be almost time for S3 gear to be out).

Any suggestions on which is more beneficial in the long run? Note I'm on a 2v2 team, and so my point income is much lower than if I could get on a 5v5 team.

 

Gnomeover

This late in the season you will want to just save all arena points, hope to pick up season 1 with honor, and buy season 2 with arena points in season 3. Some people will tell you to buy s3 with arena points but you have 0 gear and I am assuming 0 experience in the arena with a lock. So unless you are the 2nd coming of Christ in lock form you won't get enough arena points to get full s3. So play catch up and just get what you can afford!

 

shiftycent

Ha! Perfect answer, thank you. The only issue with that is that I really don't have a ton of time to BG. I'm already thinking I'm not going to get the non-arena area BG items (Bracers, Boots, Belt, Ring, etc) because of the amount of time that it will take. But, I will definitely take your advice and just hold onto any arena points I get to purcahse Season 2 gear with when the next season rolls around.

Thanks again!