Krymore

How do you guys go about at least putting up a decent fight against a Warrior or Rogue? I'm SL/SL, so any tips will hopefully be tailored toward that spec. This is my alt, so I'm still gearing him up, and I don't have much Resilience yet, but I find that most Rogues or Warriors are able to get out of my CoEx and stop my kiting, forcing me to Deathcoil and Fear.

However, Warriors are basically unfearable since they go immune when they pop Deathwish, Berserker Rage, etc., and if I miss a Fear by a second or two, the Rogues are able to Cloak of Shadows and it gets resisted. Any tips?

 

Zaq

Warriors are unfearable for those cooldowns sure, but once they've spent them you can fear them quite effectively. The point of Sl/sl builds is to live long enough so that you're in a position to do so. If your healer is running oom quickly trying to keep you up consider switching to a voidwalker and playing more defensively. Mace rogues are still very painful, but it's not lopsided. You shouldn't anticipate being able to keep warriors or rogues off their targets except in limited instances, and much of that depends on your partner. Resil and the armor from s2+ will make a noticeable difference.

"I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I'm just, like, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty." -Taylor Mali

 

Krymore

Well I'm currently running with an AR/Prep Rogue for 2v2. We generally have trouble when going against 2 DPS teams, such as Hunter/Warrior. They're both unfearable at the start of the fight, since the Hunter uses Bestial Wrath. However, if we attack the Warrior, we begin to feed him rage, allowing him to do more damage against me or my Rogue partner.

 

Aadar

24/37 or 6/44/11 for a Mage+Lock 2v2 dps team?

With the mage's spell steal and curse removal we are a little less dependant on the puppy, and with the mage's slows CoEx is not so important, so I was thinking that Felguard with his intercept might be a good choice. Thoughts anyone?

 

Kabale

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but UA spec suffered mostly due to the fact that people can now easily tell whether or not you are soul link specced or not. Most teams pick up on this quickly (especially other Warlocks, as they know how squishy UA locks are) and make the poor UA lock the primary target to nuke down. I don't think the fact that Rogues/Warriors now have Executioner enchant and more armor mitigation (although this obviously adds to the pain) made this change.

This was in my case particularly obvious in 2vs2 with Shadow Priest. 90% of matches he was the first target, whereas in s3 it's pretty much the other way around. Due to this I've just switched to SL/SL for all of the brackets.

Although I don't have much experience of playing with a Mage in 2v2, I would say the Felhunter is probably still more beneficial. It lets you leave the Mage to nuke out all his cooldowns while you work on the healer with chain CC's (Fear+Spelllock+Fear+Death Coil), after which the Mage can start Polymorphing and leaving you to finish off your target. This is just personal preference as this is my kind of play-style, but I can see benefits in using Felguard too.

 

Maels

So I'm going to try this:
70 Orc Warlock

0/40/21

12.3k hp
389 resilience
1460 bolt hits (+5% soul link isn't added on that calculator)
33% crit
hit capped

I'd be soul linked with a felhunter, chain casting bolts.
I figure about -12% crit from resilience will put me at 21% crit bolts that crit for around 2380.

Do you guys think that'd work at all, or should I not waste my time and just get the Dreadweave (and forgo all crit) for sl/sl for 2/3s and/or felguard for 5s.

 

Disposition

While your spec would provide a really nice burst with your 2.5 second shadow bolts I don't don't think losing 2 instant cast dots and your ability to kite with coeX is worth it. Also it would probably be way too easy for a rogue to lock you down since your main source of damage will now be hard cast shadow bolts rather than dots and drain life.

 

Knasen

For 2' and 3's Its probably gonna be quite weak, might work if you got a druid healer in 3's but would still prefer the normal boring sl/sl for those brackets. Seen people use it in 5', but 6/34/21 seems more common.

 

malacaprico

Hey I need some 2's advice.

Here's my setup: dual sl/sl undead warlocks. It is me and my brother as a team. My gear is as follows:

13.12k health
1055 spell damage
409 res

The spell damage is with all self buffs active. My brothers gear is less then mine in damage and res. He's at about 800 damage, and 300 res i believe.

We find that most combinations are actually a win for us. Yet our rating is pretty low in the 1500s. This we find to be the case because, no surprise here, we tend to run into more potent combos. Particularly rogue or warrior/healer. This and dual rogue are what we have the most problem with. We have a slight edge in matches vs healer/lock which is also popular. On occasion we lose to an matchup, odd to us at least, like shaman hunter because of just plain surprise to see the match up.

So the questions are: are 2 warlocks actually viable?

For play we have focus macros and a focus key for every major spell. We use proximo for frame targeting. We use power aura for quick visual feedback of non-fearable status etc. We try very hard to split melee from healers. Especially since healing is so damn powerful.

Weaknesses--currently we are not 100% educated on each and every class and spec. Some things surprise us. Brother tends to panic and doesn't abuse los properly. He will stand in open vs dual mage for example and even run directly away instead of pillar kite. Not often but does occur. He's lacking the better pvp trinkets and his damage is a bit low.

Weakness inherent to setup- our CC is on shared DRs. This is brutal. Secondly the prevalance of anti fear is very high with no corresponding protection from stuns. Pets don't scale. Drains got nerfed after my brother invested a lot of time on his lock instead of his frost mage or druid lol.

I am just wondering if any other dual warlock teams exist and what they do.

 

Nadagast

The only bracket I see this being even close to competitive is 5s and even then I think Instant Corruption and Felguard are probably better. It might be worth a shot, (and I would try it definitely if it didn't take so damn long to grind the Felweave honor gear) I think the safer way would just be Dreadweave. I don't know how good your PvP gear is but 1460 bolts seems damn low...

 

Nheeson

I'll be playing 2v2 with a priest and I'm thinking of going fellguard since it will help my 3's and 5's setup. I'd like to hear people's opinions with felguard (specificaly with a priest!) in 2's. It really looks viable since warlock priest is about offensive ''outlast'' (rather than passive with the rest of the healers) and felguards really sounds viable for the raw damage output. Warrior druid looks much easier with felguard since you'll be puting so much pressure on the warrior (especialy when he focuses the priest). Anyone tried it?

 

Hausnfranz

I wanted to get some gearing feedback from the viewpoint of a late starter:

I am currently grinding honor for season 1, and have about 1.1k arena points saved up. I get about 25k honor a week, and about 250-350 arena points per week.

I have the BG trinkets, one ring (Veterans Band of Dominance), Veterans Dreadweave Cuffs, and Seargents Heavy Cape.

I am interested to hear anyones thoughts on the best method of acquiring Season 1 gear from BG and Season 2 or 3 gear when I have the arena points. Assuming I cannot get the Season 3 weapons or shoulders, I should get Season 2? Are there any other areas where I should go with S2 over S3 due to the discount?

I still have blue PvE gloves, so that seems like a likely choice for my first S3 upgrade? Or should I wait to save points for something else? And this is where I get tied in knots, I'm not sure which items I can skip over and which to target first, and at what level (BG, S1/S2/S3). And should I take the strategy of replacing the weakest items, ie gloves?

Armory Profile

 

toth

I think S1 or S3 gloves should be, by far, your first honor/arena purchase. S1 or S3 doesn't matter, but the 50% pushback resistance to fear is great for when you get focused or if you've got a pet on you.

 

doogless

S2/S3 are very worthwhile upgrades from S1 because of the additional armor that was budgeted to them. S2 > S3 doesn't have the same armor upgrade, since the only increase was from being a higher ilevel (which for cloth means 10 armor ), but going S1 > S2 you gain 154 armor. It might not seem like a lot, but it really does add up, especially with armor penetration on all the S3 melee gear.

 

Shinanigans17

the main upgrade from s2/s3 was the spell penetration, believe it or not it helps alot vs RMP (shadow protection) and when you're trying to kill warlock/hunter pets.. thats only if you are smart enough to get it though.

 

doogless

With the new spell haste items available, is anyone else considering trying to stack spell haste? I currently use Steady Talasite in all my yellow slots save one, which is the Halaa 10 resil gem, in order to keep activate my Mystical Skyfire meta. If I switch all the Steady Talasite to the new Forceful Talasite, the Sublime Mystic Dawnstone to a Quick Dawnstone, and get the new cloak and Battlemaster Trinket, I'd gain a total of 80 spell haste, but lose 60 resilience. 80 spell haste is 5.1% haste, which would (unless my math is wrong) bring my GCD down to 1.42 seconds, and bring my Drain Life/Drain Mana spells down to 4.75 seconds. I currently have over 490 resilience, so I'm certainly not lacking that, but I'm always hesitant to drop resilience. Does this seem like a good idea to anyone else, or am I dropping survivability for not enough increased utility?

ed: Possibly another 30 spell haste if I switch out the Veteran's ring for one of the new JC spell haste rings. I'm very tempted by this, but not sure if the trade off of survivability is worth it.

 

Nerphlox

It's definitely possible to get 100+ haste with just switching to haste pvp ring, pvp neck, pvp back, pvp trinket without losing resilience. I'm not sure if it'll be worthwhile to substitute gems though as that comes at the cost of resilience.

On a related note: does anybody know how the haste lowering gcd affects pvp 4set bonus? ie. with 0haste, is gcd of fear still 1.5 seconds, or does the 4set reduce both cast time and gcd of fear?

 

Cor Unum

Hello friends,

I only recently started to pvp. I run arena 2v2 with my druid buddy. I have 10k hp, 230 resi. He has 7k and 20 resi (I know it's bad, he's farming it up and I'm just trying to get the hang of it).

I have some questions about general match ups.

vs Warrior + Pally.

We usually kite the warrior and mana drain the pally. Should I put some dots up on the warrior to keep more pressure on healers mana/reflexes or should I just coex/fear and control him to give him less rage? For now I usually choose to dot up both, had some lucky warrior kills already, because the healer was too busy saving himself.

vs Shadow Priest and Affliction/sl-sl/felguard warlock.

Have some problems here, mainly because my druid buddy ocassionally dies and because my dots do far less damage.
Insect swarm + moonfire spam is a must here, as far as I can tell.
Should I try to spam banish on the warlocks pet? Resist chance is very high + I can get locked out of shadow school.

Didn't do any matches vs double melee teams, but I'm sure they are a pain.

Also, I would like an opinion on:
Battlemaster's Audacity - Items - World of Warcraft
and
Talisman of the Horde - Items - World of Warcraft
Which one should I go for to replace my Alembic of Infernal Power - Items - World of Warcraft.

 

Pointyleaf

vs. Warrior/Pally - Generally harass the paladin while keeping dots on the warrior, trying to burn down the warrior some and making the paladin bubble. When the pally bubbles, your druid chain casts cyclone on the warrior until the bubble wears off, then use dots + feral charge, spell lock, fear, curse of tongues to finish off the warrior. This should be one of the easiest teams for you.

vs. warlock/spriest - make sure you conjure a spellstone and equip it. Use as much cc as you can, as often as you can, in order to keep them from killing your druid. If you have a spellstone up and use it wisely, you'll probably stay alive. Beating this combo (like beating most 2-dps teams) relies on your abilities to keep them from applying full dps pressure to either one of you.

 

Trennet

I have restarted 5v5 on a Drain team as SL/SL.

Do fellow Drain Team locks recommend prioritizing Drain Mana over mass DoTing? I'm unsure since Drain Mana helps burn out 1 target quicker; but mass DoTing puts more Pally/Priest in GCD a ton more + covers other debuffs + pressures healers into more healing. Of course CCing dpsers (Fear and CoT) remains #1 priority to slow down the fight while our draining takes effect.

Any tips would be appreciated.

 

toth

I don't yet have arena experience as a Warlock, but I think your first priority should be to dot everyone up. It puts a lot of pressure on your opponent's healers which is going to make them cast real heals, which is going to keep them in the open and susceptible to mana burn, drain mana, etc.

However, I'd caution against dot'g up multiple targets if there's a priest on the opposing team. PoM is incredibly mana efficient when it bounces around and that is exactly what you don't want.

 

hugh1130

So i am starting to PvP on my warlock and I am looking for some help with simple questions

-which of the two wands are better

2/5+3/5 or 5/5 dread-weave in terms of set bonuses

which badges cloak, the current one or the haste one from 2.3

and which meta, 18 stm or spell cast time... keeping in the 2.4 nerfs.

 

toth

I'd prefer the spell pen wand as I think spell pen is very helpful to warlocks in arena.

I'd go with 5/5 dreadweave for the 4pc set bonus.

I don't know which cloak would be best...that depends a little bit on your spec and team make up. Assuming you're going SL/SL with an outlast setup, it really depends by how much that spell haste drops your drain mana cast time. That could make the spell haste worth it.

As for the meta, I haven't looked in to the 2.4 nerfs so I'll let others comment. Pre-2.4 I think the MSD is amazing, though.

 

Spoht

If you look at the top warlocks in 2v2 and 3v3 the majority choose to pick up 3/5 dreadweave 2/5 felweave as the 35 resilience they gain allows more room for putting +spell gems in gear whilst not actually loosing significant amounts of +spell or +stamina from the felweave set. For example dreadweave shoulders waste ilevel on +hit so felweave is actually an upgrade if your already at the hit cap, most other slots for felweave do happen to be worse off but only slightly with the exception being the chest which is a huge downgrade compared to dreadweave. Its a tough call and i was very much inclined to get the fear cast time reduction but it just cant be justified. If you use with 4 peice you will be forced to gem resi which hurts your ability to obtain msd as no of blues must exceed yellow further reducing your damage capabilities.

As for wands the spell penetration wand is very helpful for warlocks in arena as you are very likely to encounter some level of shadow resistance in arena (Priest Pally Druid Mage Warlock).