hugh1130

It is to be considered that the MSD becomes almost useless next patch and I am still unsure of what meta to socket.

Also, I am unsure what the spellhit cap for pvp is and if there is one I do not think most setups get there.

 

Presarc

I'm a Sl/Sl warlock that goes between 2200-2300 atm with a druid partner. Currently I use 4/5 Dreadweave and 1/5 Felweave (gloves, for the crit for the occasional NF proc). The -0.2s to fear helps especially when it comes to warriors. Since GCD is >1.3s, they are often unable to pummel your fear if you fake once. I'm sitting at 468 resilience atm, and am basically capped without going 2/5 felweave. I considered it for a long time, and decided on the 4/5 simply because 35 resilience and (assuming epic gems) about 50 sp dmg or so isn't as make or break to me as a key fear.

Just my thoughts.

 

bobobo

Hi EJ, my lock (Greeley on Rexxar) needs yo help.

First of all, do I get the dreadweave or silk from honor rewards? I was undecided so in a kind of spur of the moment thing I bought the silk belt/bracer and dreadweave boots/neck(Dominance), which I'm going to assume was a bad move considering that you're either gearing for crit or you're gearing for resil/dmg/stam. My reasoning was that those pcs of silk would be better for 5v5 where I'd be felguard spec, and I'd pretty much just have to suck up being a little inferior as SL/SL in 2v2/3v3, but I read in this thread that crit is basically useless. Also, is the battlemaster trinket worth it?

Second, I have a macro to dispel the party leader, then the second party member, then the third. If there isn't anything to dispel, or if I press shift, it'll dispel my target. Is there a better one? Is it ever worth it to cast an immolate instead of a fear? thanks.

 

Depleter

Semi-frequent reader, First time poster.

I remember seeing people mentioning that stat bonuses (stam/spell damage/crit ect) have diminishing returns, in terms of stacking predominantly towards one, or a select few. I'm not certain if this is in reference to the way items are budgeted when they heavily favor pushing a narrow scope vs a broader one, or it there is a drop off in what you'll get for that extra socket/enchant.

Specifically, I'm curious if anyone has some specifics around stacking stamina, while itemizing for "endgame" arena gear.

I've got full S3 gear (4/5 dreadweave, felw. gloves, S3 spellblade/grimoire, 3/3 vindi dreadweave) so even though I'm primarily socketed towards stamina, I have the other bases well covered (974 shadow damage, 79 spell penetration, and 431 resilience). Unbuffed I'm sitting at 1056 stamina. After some brief looking around, I haven't found many highly competitive warlocks that are noticeably higher, stam wise.

Any detailed assistance would be great.

 

Presarc

The commonly accepted rule is that hp is just there to prevent you from being bursted, and after that (~13k unbuffed), resilience is the way to go. I would shoot for the 460-480+ range of resilience.

 

Jimad

I had somewhat of a reality check early this morning. I've been playing with my current (and only) 2v2 partner since the beginning of s3 (s3 is also my first season of Arenas). He and I hover around the high-1600s to the mid-1700s, and have peaked at ~1795. I'm an SL/SL lock (almost always specced 23/38/00). He is a druid, who bounces between a DS and Swiftmend build, depending upon whatever floats his boat at the time. It is pretty safe to consider us "recreational Arena players", as we typically put in our 10 games a week, and call it good.

I believe I'm more than geared to excel in our current bracket, and others tell me my gear can pretty easily support a 2k+ rating.
My current stats, completely unbuffed, are :
HP - 12,799
Resilience - 465
Armor - 1880
Spell Damage - 917 shadow, 863 fire (no fel armor, no pet)
Spell Penetration - 79
Current Armory link - The World of Warcraft Armory (The Arena ratings and rosters are no where near current or correct.)

The rude awakening came when a warlock guildmate of ours joined the team, just so we could add a new element to the mix. He is a very good arena player, running 2s and 3s of all varieties up above 2k ratings. Upon joining the team, he and my normal partner promptly went undefeated, winning some games that we probably would not have won had I been present (according to my partner). He works with more spell damage than I do, putting talent points in Empowered Corruption and Improved Curse of Agony, where I choose to place those points in Demonic Resilience and Mana Feed. Other than that, there are no "leaps and bounds" differences in our gear. He has slightly more resilience, but less hit points.

A few things were said in Vent, by my druid partner, during their games that really caught my attention, such as "Man! You do alot of damage!", "I don't really know what happened, but things just kind of died", "I never even saw the shaman", and "You don't even need heals". Needless to say, my personal pride took a bit of a beating, as I came to believe I was the weak link in the team.

I asked him to duel me a few times, to try and gauge the difference in our individual performance. He proceeded to pummel me into the ground three times in a row. The lowest I was able to get him was ~70%. I was simply out-classed.

My question is directed to the SL warlocks with very high arena ratings, ones that consider themselves to be exceptional (or at least very good). What, in your opinion, are "the little things" you do that separate you from the masses of average, or even above-average, players? Are there common mistakes you see many other warlocks do, that you don't make? Is it simply quick reflexes and a solid ability to multi-task, or are there some fairly standard tricks-of-the-trade?

As I said, this is my first season of Arenas. I have been, for the most part, a 10-game-a-week player, but have recently been feeling a strong urge to improve both my personal PvP play, and team play. I'm not new to WoW (been playing over 2 years), nor am I a "donkey" or a "nub". Just so happens that I've recently discovered the margin between a "good" player and a "great" player is HUGE. I'm seeking to close the gap.

Thanks in advance for any, any, input that you might have to share. Sorry if my post is a bit overdone. It's late, and I'm in a mental fog.

EDIT : I have indeed read this thread in its entirety, along with most all other warlock threads, both PvE and PvP.

 

Presarc

I'm a warlock with 2250 2v2, 2100 3v3, 2200 5v5. Warlocks are probably the most demanding class in the game in terms of micromanagement in PvP. Not so much in 2v2, but there are always multiple targets to consider, and typically a target on you.

The "little things" that you're mentioning are hard to put a finger on. Obviously, quick reflexes help, but not as much as plain old situational awareness. In lower rating brackets like the one you're in, healers often leave themselves susceptible to a lot of CC. For example, against priest/rogue you should be getting as many mana drains as possible off on the priest, while kiting the rogue around using CoX (save your amp cox for when it will be key, when his CoS is down, and that gives you a huge advantage).

How did you get stomped so hard in a duel? I'll be the first to say that dueling is probably the worst indicator of skill in the world of PvP, even if it's against the same class. His talent choice will help him in a dueling format, but will get him killed in 3v3.

The bottom line is to be aware of your surroundings. You have to be able to access all of your abilities instantly. If you're clicking anything other than pre-game buffs, there is a problem. If you dont have all of your pets abilities bound to something, there is a problem. As a warlock who engages in PvP, you should have every ability you use regularly key-bound, as well as "focus," "target focus," and "target last target."

 

Nerun

Thanks a bunch for all the tips in this threads folks. Really good info.

My main team atm is druid/lock. Until now we went with the strategy "no dps, just weakness on warriors until druid is OOM" against druid/warrior and it worked ok until like 2000/2050. Lately we're meeting a lot of Druids that can LOS me in pretty much every arena, but the pillars in Nagrand are probably the most frustrating. The warrior keeps on me and while he gets CC'ed by my Druid a lot, he still gets Hamstring on me. I can't catch the Druid while I'm slowed of course, but that's only half of the problem.

As I said I don't put anything on the Warrior except weakness. The druid simply isn't under any pressure to come out behind the pillar. Now I've read a lot of stuff here and on other sites that some Warlocks simply ignore the fact that Warriors get more rage/dps when you put dps on them. I'm kinda curious if some of you that are DOT'ing up warriors constantly are around here and how you would rate the difference in dps (pressure on my druid).

Thanks a bunch

 

Beardyhead

Against druid/warrior, you should definitely be keeping up Corr/SiLi on the warrior since that team has no ability to dispel. If the druid's pillar humping you have to lead the warrior away from the druid and dps him- immolate/incinerate to bait a fire-school pummel, proceed to drain, root, etc. You have to get that druid to come out and heal, from then he is able to be cc'd, dotted, forced to spend mana, etc. Chasing druids is silly.

 

Nerun

Another thing I was wondering about is how much warlocks actually use Spellstones. Sure, you're not going to use it against every team, but it's another dispel of all magical effects every three mintues now that the stone doesn't vanish anymore after use.

The description says "dispels all magic effects". Does anyone know if that would count as dispelling Unstable Affliction?

Do you guys think it's worth giving up the wand against certain teams?

 

doogless

Spellstone will dispel UA, and it will hurt when you do it. It's worth using against any team that will put magic debuffs on you, including Mage teams to avoid Shatter combos.

 

taybul

Hey all,

Last night I got back into arenas and jumped right into 3v3s with a resto shaman and warrior. I went as your typical 27/34 (with emphasis on damage), have around 330-ish resil, 3pc S2 and 2pc T6 (for heal bonus, for now). I'm working on another piece of S2 or S3 to get the dual +35 resil bonuses.

My question: how do I deal with 2 melee classes + healer teams if I'm their focus target? In my case last night 2 different teams that had a warr+rogue took me down pretty quickly. I had a voidwalker on SL and tried to CC either melee but they had too many escape mechanisms. At some point I was able to successfully kite the rogue with the warrior still on me but a shadowstep turned the tides on that pretty quickly.

What would you do in this situation?

 

Ralask

Well without freedom or a druid to help you CC you are pretty screwed. I would have your warrior intercept the rogue and hamstring and try to get a fear off on him. You just really dont have a whole lot of options, I would drop the 2 pc Tier 6 for sure and wear 2 pc Felweave and 3 piece dreadweave for max res vs double melee. Double melee are just going to zerg you down and if you dont have a druid you are probably not going to win.

 

Nadagast

Shaman healing a Warlock with 2 melee on him and no way to get free = you're fucked quickly

You'll have to get a kill fast, I assume you're playing against a Dru/melee/melee team so just dot everything, pop Bloodlust early, try to have your Shaman Shock and Grounding as many Cyclones/Roots on your Warrior as you can and your Warrior will have to use his brain and look for opportunities to get a kill. Also if your dots get the Druid to like ~70-80% you can probably kill him with a Intercept -> Coil, have your Shaman assist with a Chain Lightning + top rank Earth Shock too maybe if he can. With full dots your Warrior can maybe kill the Druid

 

Coen

Long time reader, first time poster so take it easy on me.

I've just hit 70, specced 24/37/0 and brought my first piece of S1 (gloves for the Fear buff).

I've started to second guess my talent choices in the Afflication tree.

My current build is: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'm thinking of dropping Amp. Curse and CoEx and placing the two talent points into Nightfall.

My reasons behind this being that it seems that most melee classes have some way to avoid the movement reduction (Blessing of Freedom, Cloak of Nub etc.) or can reduce your movement to an equal or lesser amount (Poisons, Deadly Throw, Hamstring, Stuns, Escape Artist etc.) and when you're kiting it's not like you can really SL the target since you're moving.

I play battlegrounds, never really had a go at arena (live in Australia so 400ms latency rather sucks) as a result I often have Corruption on multiple targets to help with the Nightfall proc rate.

Also seeing DoTs tick for >50 (thanks to high resil) is rather annoying and I believe the extra burst damage from Nightfall procs would help.

The spec I propose is: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

So, can you pick any faults or make any suggestions before I change those points over?

 

Kambing

I'd strongly reconsider dropping coex. While it's true that there's a lot of mitigating factors to slowing effects, it'll be crucial that you and your partner set up opportunities with coex to get the pressured team member out of harms way. For example, you may force the rogue to blow his cooldowns and then use coex coupled with a pre-fear to peel him off your partner (possibly coupled with your partner clicking off his slowing effect). Coex is also great to lock down drain targets, even on druids as that'll force them to decide to keep the coex or shed it via shifting (and burn mana as a result).

My recommendation would be to take points from fel concentration into amp and coex. I find that you'll rarely get unmolested full drains off without getting your shadow school locked as a result (from a Pummel or a Kick). Also, if you are getting stunlocked by a rogue, you probably won't be draining to begin with anyways.

 

Pointyleaf

Answering the question about spellstones, I always pull one up - they can be a great help against warlock teams, and is incredible against the very rare spriest/warlock. It goes in the wand slot, so you can equip it after the match starts (ClosetGnome is good for this).

I've been reworking my bindings a little lately, but still use mouse clicks for a few things (healthstones, pet summoning, mana/life drain, spellstone, aoe fears). I'd be very interested in your bindings. I messed with focuses for a while, but didn't find them to be great without any kind of window up that showed me the focus' casting bar (I have to click the target anyway to see his cast bar, so it's prett easy to hit spelllock from there).

Anyone else have thoughts on key bindings or GUI?

 

toth

I'll share mine, but this is from memory so I may not remember it exactly. Also, I'm left-handed...you'd want to translate over towards WASD as a right hander. I use IJKL for movement:

Y - Immolate
U - Corruption
G - Curse of Agony (Amplifies automatically...this I may change later on)
H - Drain Life
B - Curse of Exhaustion
N - Shadowbolt
M - Siphon Life
O - Fear
; - Spell Lock / Consume Shadows / Intercept
' - Will of the Forsaken
[ - Curse of Tongues
] - Lifetap
T - pet attack
6 - pet follow
7 - pet stay
8 - Howl of Terror
9 - Shadow Ward
0 - PvP Trinket
- - Death Coil
= - Summon Dreadsteed
C-Y - Bandage
C-U - Health Stone
C-G - Banish
C-H - Drain Mana
C-N - Hellfire
C-M - Health Funnel
C-O - Focus Fear
C-; - Focus Spell Lock / Sacrifice / Focus Intercept
. - Target Nearest Enemy
F5 - Self Dispell
F6 - Party1 Dispell
F7 - Party2 Dispell
F8 - Party3 Dispell
F12 - Set Focus Target

I think that's most of them. I have a button on my mouse bound to Ctrl for the Ctrl binds. Basically I try to set up my binds so that I can access any ability at any time without moving my hands off my movement keys. I'd like to try to re-work them at some point, especially the dispell keybinds. I'd also like to work Searing Pain in somewhere. I don't use it often, but it may be useful as a way to try to draw out a pummel/kick if someone isn't paying enough attention.

 

Dappa

I'll throw in my keybindings, just to compare mine to some of yours:

1: Drain Life (macro: /cast [nochanneling:Drain Life] Drain Life)
2: Curse of Agony (macro: /cast Amplify Curse; /cast Blood Fury; /cast Curse of Agony)
3: Immolate
4: Corruption
5: Siphon Life
6: Drain Mana (macro: same as drain life)
Q: Shadow Bolt
X: Searing Pain
Shift-F: Spell Lock (macro: /cast [target=mouseover,exists,harm,nodead][] Spell Lock)
F: Pet Attack
E: Drain Soul
Shift-Space: PVP trinket
Shift-Z: Life Tap
Shift-C: Soul Link
Shift-X: Fear macro:

#showtooltip
/clearfocus [target=noexist]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/cast [target=focus,harm] [] Fear

Shift-S: Shadow Ward
Alt-1: Fel Armor
Alt-2: Death Coil
Alt-3: Howl of Terror
Alt-4: Health Funnel
Ctrl-X: Banish
Z: Devour Magic macro:

/cast [help] Devour Magic; [target=mouseover,help] Devour Magic
/cast [target=player] Devour Magic
/cast [target=pet] Devour Magic
/cast Devour Magic

Mouse3 (middle): Pet Passive (callback)
Mouse4: Targetlasttarget
Shift-1: Curse of Tounges
Shift-2: Curse of Exhaustion
Shift-3: Curse of Weakness
Numpad-1: Healthstone
Numpad-2: Battlemaster trinket
Numpad-5: Fel Domination (macro: /castsequence [target=player] Fel Domination, Summon Voidwalker, Sacrifice)
Numpad-7: Arena buffing (macro: /castsequence reset=target Detect Invisibility, Unending Breath)
Numpad-8 BG/Arena Selfbuffing (macro: /castsequence reset=N [target=player] Soul Link, Fel Armor, Detect Invisibility, Unending Breath)

| : Mount! macro:

/userandom [nomounted,nomodifier,flyable] Swift Red Windrider; [nomounted] Horn of the Frostwolf Howler, Red Skeletal Warhorse, Whistle of the Black War Raptor, Black War Kodo, Summon Dreadsteed
/dismount [mounted]

Pheeeew, all done!

 

Roldrethus

Any decent unit frames mod should show you a cast bar for your focus frame but personally I prefer Quartz which gives you independently placeable casting bars for you, your target, your focus, etc. For example my focus casting bar is directly under its unitframe but roughly 4 times larger than my target's casting bar, just so I notice.

 

Gritz

Grab the Locknotes [Curse Gaming] addon, it'll pop up warnings for CloS, Divine Shield, Iceblock, Spell Reflect, etc; and lets you know if a spell was resisted. There are lots of addons that do pretty much the same thing, I've found this to be the easiest to read in the heat of a battle.

For GUI - I use Bongos3, and set up the action bars to mimic the layout of my Hotkeys. I use an N52 [notaddicted]. I use the D pad for shift/Control/Alt (and Space to jump). With no D-pad input, I have the standard QWE-ASD movement keys surrounded by 8 spells. Pressing 'Up' 'Left' or 'Down' gives me 14 keybinds for a total of 50 keybinds + movement keys. I use the thumb trigger to switch targets, and the red trigger to mount up. Fear/Vent are bound to Mouse 3 and Mouse 4.

On my laptop, I have two profiles saved for keybinds - one for when I have my N52 with me, and one for Keyboard only. ESDF are my movement keys, with all the surrounding buttons in finger's reach are bound to various spells. I use the same idea as the N52 - shift/control/alt and no modifier gives me 4 spells for each key.

As far as actual keybinds - I found it helpful to group similar spell types - DoTs, DD, Demon control (HF/Banish/Enslave), PvP (Spell Lock/Intercept/Seduce; CC trinket, Devour me, Devour target). To save space, I macro all my various damage trinkets to Corruption and Shadowbolt, and all the various types of healing trinkets and potions together. Here is an example:

/Use Talisman of the Horde
/Use Battlemaster's Audacity
/Use Healing Potion Injector
/Use Super Healing Potion

 

Vain

This sounded like a really good idea, but last night I tried remapping one of my side mouse buttons to CTRL to enable a potential whole slew of new key combinations, and found a rather fatal flaw: If you hit escape while you are doing a CTRL combo, it alt-tabs you out of the game and brings up the Windows start menu, because CTRL-Escape is a special Windows combo. I thought I would get around this by mapping it to ALT instead, but not only does ALT-Escape also yank you out of WoW, but you run into the danger of hitting ALT+tab.

As far as I can tell (and I searched for a long time to try to figure this out) there isn't a way to disable only the CTRL-Escape combo; all the techniques for doing so also disabled Alt-Tab, which I want to keep. If it were possible to disable only CTRL-Escape, though, or if some other suitable modifier existed instead, this would be perfect.

 

Roldrethus

Hrm. I've been doing a bit of math for myself, and as far as I can tell, 3 points of SM is better than DK for everything except stuff like searing pain, especially after the DK nerf.

Basic math:
(Corruption + spell damage * improved corruption * SM)
900 + ( 1170 * 1.26 ) * 1.06 = 2516

(Assuming 105 from DK)
900 + (1275 * 1.26 ) = 2506

Agony:
1356 + ( 1170 * 1.2 ) * 1.06 = 2925

1356 + ( 1275 * 1.2 ) = 2886

(Ignoring the base value of 2 points in SM doesn't seem to change things)

 

Dappa

I've been doing alittle math aswell with Demonic Knowledge. Ofcourse the amount of spelldamage you recieve is linked to how much stamina and intelligence your character has. Now, I have a base spell damage at 914, and felhunter gives me 112 extra spell damage. I've tested to see if I should dump all my points in SM as I currently have a 27/34 spec, so I already have 4% in SM with Demonic Knowledge.

These are my results:
#Corruption
(900 + (1 026 * 1.3)) * 1.04 = 2 323.152 // With Demonic Knowledge
(900 + (914 * 1.3)) * 1.1 = 2 297.02 // Without Demonic Knowledge

#Curse of Agony
(1 356 + (1 026 * 1.2)) * 1.04 = 2 690.688 // With Demonic Knowledge
(1 356 + (914 * 1.2)) * 1.1 = 2 698.08 // Without Demonic Knowledge

#Siphon Life
(630 + 914) * 1.1 = 1 698.4 // With Demonic Knowledge
(630 + 1 026) * 1.04 = 1 722.24 // Without Demonic Knowledge

#Drain Life
(540 + (1 026 * 0.7143)) * 1.04 = 1 323.78667 // With Demonic Knowledge
(540 + (914 * 0.7143)) * 1.1 = 1 312.15722 // Without Demonic Knowledge

The results show the obvious fact that the more bonus the spell gets from +damage the more effecive it is. Corruption has 130% with Emp Corruption and Demonic Knowledge gives a bigger benefit than 5/5 SM, while CoA gives 120% bonus from spell damage and 5/5 SM wins marginally. Demonic Knowledge wins out marginally with Siphon Life on the damage part, but with 5/5 you'll drain more life. Same with Drain Life.

Demonic Knowledge requires a pet and when that pet dies you also lose the spell damage. Voidwalker gives even less spell damage than Felhunter so you'll lose even more damage if you choose to resummon him as a second pet. With 5/5 you also gain an additional 6% on your lifedrains which is very helpful.

All in all, Demonic Knowledge will be better in terms of pure dps if you can keep your Felhunter up through the match. Voidwalker will reduce your dps below 5/5 SM.

The difference becomes less when you get more base spell damage:
#Corruption
(900 + (1 200 * 1.3)) * 1.1 = 2 706 // Without Demonic Knowledge
(900 + (1 312 * 1.3)) * 1.04 = 2 709.824 // With Demonic Knowledge

SM simply scales better with +damage than Demonic Knowledge does with 12% of your pets sta/int.

 

toth

Well, don't do that Alternatively, you can use shift instead of ctrl or alt. Shift-ESC shouldn't do anything as far as I know.