Myonax

One thing that I have noticed some hunters/warlocks do in arenas that I haven't been able to replicate is insta-killing totems with their pets.

We fought one team and our shaman was finding the second he dropped a totem the warlock had killed it with his felhunter. Are people doing this with macros or mods? If a warlock can add that into their mix of usual duties they bring even more to the table. Removing grounding, windfury mana tide and tremor totem from the opposing teams arsenal is amazing.

 

Shadowborne

It's called a totem stomper macro and is extremely popular. It makes Shamans cake in arenas.

 

Dinadass

/petattack [target=Grounding Totem]; [target=Tremor Totem]; [target=Earthbind Totem];

There's a basic one for you. You can also add in mana tide, searing, etc. I find it easier than trying to target a totem and wand it, because arenas are generally pretty hectic and shamans try to drop them behind pillars, etc. Also, spamming the above macro won't interupt your spell casts or cause a global cooldown for you.

 

Dommius

Thanks for that macro, I have been using it a lot lately when I am facing shamans and it is a huge help!!

 

bloodurst

I had a really long response typed out but for whatever reason it didn't post so I'm just going to give you a quick run down of what I *posteed.*

-Your UI setup is important. Knowledge is power. Use NECB so you can watch opponent cooldowns and also to keep track of their DR to fear and CoEx.

-Use Focus windows. I can do anything to my focus without switching targets. This helps on many levels as well as trickery. If you start casting fear and you are targeting someone and they see you trying to fear with them as you target, they may pop a cooldown to stop it when you are actually fearing your focus.

 

diotox

When the 8 resilence gem actually gets into the game, will this change how warlocks gem their gear, or is it still going to be stuffed with 12 sta gems? Is there an HP cutoff where you guys would value resilence more?

 

bloodurst

See this thread in regards to stamina vs resilience gems:
PVP Gemming in 2.1.2---12sta vs 8 Resil

 

Gritz

These two macros are (almost too) simple but very helpful when dealing with healers:

/focus

sets up the healer as your focus, so you can keep an eye on their casting, then

/cast [target=focus] Spell Lock

locks up the healer.

Very simple, I know. It gives you that crucial timing though, especially when there are extra targets in the area (Totems, Barov Peasants, Treants, Frost elementals, etc).

Spec wise, as many have said, 23/38/0, 6/44/11, and 6/34/21 (ordered from most->least survivabilty and least->most burst) are all great Soul Link specs. After you get in the 300+ resilience range, 43/7/11 is a popular spec as well.

 

toader

Does anyone have a link where I can download that Totem Stomper mod?

I searched for it on the two addon sites I know of...no luck.

http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/4982/gognomenj4.jpg

 

Gritz

AFAIK, it's just a macro, not an addon.

 

toader

Ah ok, I read the post above wrong. So this is the macro that 'totem stomps'?

/petattack [target=Grounding Totem]; [target=Tremor Totem]; [target=Earthbind Totem];




When you press that macro...what exactly does the pet do? If theres a Grounding totem, it will kill that, then return to your side? If there's no grounding totem, then it goes for Tremor, kills it, then returns to you?

Are there any more complex versions of this macro that puts your pet back on certain targets or stuff like that?

http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/4982/gognomenj4.jpg

 

Spankydoodle

Just to clear up some confusion, you don't actually have to make a macro for "/focus," there is a key binding you can set to set focus, as well as one to target your focus.

 

bloodurst

Memorized Fearing
* This macro will set your focus to a mob and fear it all in one click. If your focus dies, it will reset the focus and cast fear on the next mob that the macro is used with. If your focus is still alive, it will cast fear on your focus, no matter what your target is. You can force it to reset your focus to your current target by holding down alt while pressing the macro button. If your focus is somehow set to a help target, it will clear the focus and cast fear on your current target (but will not set the focus to that target). This macro will not automatically chain Fear, you must press the macro button for each individual fight.

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


Taken from the official forums. You can use this for spell lock also.

 

Bibdy

The only unfortunate part about the macros is if, for example, Windfury totem is highest on your priority list and there isn't one up, it'll target the next target with a name similar to 'Windfury'. Anyone with a name starting with W will confuse the macro.

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

tristantio

Fear is just as easily dispelled as corruption is (exception being if I'm actually fearing the healer).

I primarily play 2v2 and 3v3, and I have tried Grim Reach and do not notice it missing. Since the majority of my spells are instants it is not that difficult to be moving towards the target I need to fear. Also I cannot remember the last time I've failed a spell due to the target being out of range, it's always due to line of sight if it occurs, and Grim Reach won't help with line of sight dancers.

Sure, against teams that run with a paladin/priest healer (a large majority) the corruption will be dispelled occasionally, but this mainly happens only at the start of the fight, after the healer is required to start out healing damage it occurs much less frequently, and the extra 60 a tick helps immensely.

 

Silmeria

I hardly miss grim reach either in the arenas. The extra range is nice, but taking an extra 2 or 3 steps is not difficult.

How do you get away with drain life in arenas, out of curiousity? I feel like I'm begging for a school lock when I do that, and it's definitely happened. If there's no chance for a spell lock on the table, I'll give it a go, but that's a pretty rare circumstance.

I suppose watching the CDs on spell lock abilities would be key, but I haven't found a good arena mod to let me do that cleanly I run NECB, but I have either failed to configure it properly to globally track CDs, or it doesn't flat out do what I want it to do.

 

◊ Gwaihir

There is an option in NECB to track ALL castbars and cooldowns, I think it comes with a warning attached to it, because it gets incredibly spammy. I think the checkbox you are looking for is in the top left area. Check that one, and check the 'monitor short duration cooldowns' box and you should be good.

 

• frmorrison

I also don't mind not having Grim Reach either, but it would be nice to have but I value other talents more.

Drain Life is best used when someone that can interupt your shadow school is being Feared or is otherwise CCed.

 

Silmeria

Spammy is the main problem there, I can't process that much information, and I don't think NECB has filter support off the top of my head.

 

Nitemare

Spec, gear choice, and even spell priority are all based on two variables: 1) the composition of your team, and 2) the composition of your opponents team. For example, if I see a druid as a main healer I fear him right off the bat, almost always he will blow his trinket during this non-critical fear. This results in allowing me to 3x fear him later in the game while we burn down his teammates.

I run with a shadowpriest in 2v2s (NE priest, human warlock). Our racials are a little less useful than most so we instead focus on outlasting many teams until we can ensure a lockdown on healing. For example, doing steady damage on a warrior in a warrior/pally team and forcing the pally to bubble and use his trinket. After both of those "outs" are used I can almost guarantee the pally will not get another heal off since I have 3 fears, CoT, spell lock, and deathcoil ready to go.

I've tried every spec imaginable to help compliment the shadowpriest partner. It seems that regardless of spec there is always one "main" combo that will just out preform (especially with our lack of racials). For example, a SL based build is better against rogue based combos but makes warrior/pally combos more difficult. Whereas UA makes warrior/pally teams ALOT easier but makes rogue based teams much more difficult. Furthermore, it has been my experience that drain life is a drastically superior form of damage. While you are all but shouting in a fight to "interupt me!" it is really no different than casting shadowbolt due to the predominance of mods that show enemy casting bars. The benefit comes from 1) it being alot harder to LOS (you push it and it will instantly land and follow someone behind a pillar, shadowbolt will just stop and you will do no damage), and 2) it suffers from 70% less knockback from talents that boost your survivability as well. I pretty much never shadowbolt except for nightfall procs and have noticed it actually easier to DPS down a healing class due to a slight advantage of damage not completely mitigated by LOS.

Grim reach is worth the points. 1) it helps keep a healer in range while fear locking, 2) it allows you to kite WAY more effectively using CoEx (you can keep curse and instant dots up out of range), and 3) it allows you to often get an opening dot onto people charging in (warriors to get them in combat is especially nice).

As a final note: LoS can either keep you alive or just rip you apart. Trying to stop a resto druid who is running circles around a pillar is almost impossible. But LOSing a hunter or mage around a pillar can give you precious seconds until your abilities are back up. Also, with the HUGE push for shadow resist greens, just about any warlock based team is screwed. I've already run up against multiple teams sporting 300+ shadow resist and having the vast majority of my spells resisted.

 

Vazu

Start casting Immolate right before you want to Drain Mana / Life. You wouldn't believe the number of Warriors who Pummel my fire tree.

 

Mordekhuul

I tested this a bit last night with a shammy friend. It picked up Grounding Totem without issue, but never saw tremor or earthbind, and also sent my felguard off to go attack a wolf outside Shattrath =)

Any more refined versions of the macro around? Would be quite a useful 5th hotkey for me to use to micro my felguard.

 

cb_

I'm thinking of a specc for myself in 2v2. Im in the same shoes as Dommius, probably even worse considering my gear is subpar. I happen to have a feral druid partner (my pop) and I wanted a specc to accomdate that. The only thing in consideration is keeping raid viablity without having to respec every week ( that gets expensive! ).

The spec I had in mind was a 42/19/0 build. I would lose a bit of raid dps without bane or imp shadowbolt, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice. Any thoughts?

btw, my ISP is having issues with connection to the WoW page, so I can't retrieve my armory for you. Sorry .

 

Dommius

Yeah, I have been doing a bit of 2vs2 with my shadow priest friend, and I've been thinking about speccing affliction for when we do arenas. Having unstable affliction on there to kind of safeguard all our dots will help a lot I think at least in the 2vs2 bracket. For anything higher than 2vs2 I still seem to have to go demo for survivablity otherwise I get insta-gibbed in 5 seconds.

I guess it will get better once I get more pvp gear, which is a long, slow process at this time for me anyway. :P

 

Optimized

My biggest problem I have in arena is that warriors and rogues totally shut me down. I have seen other warlocks that we put our warrior on seemingly ignore him. I seem to get owned in the duration of death wish though. Do you play differently if you have a rogue or warrior on you? Do you only cast instant abilities? Do you try to just "tank" them until death wish is up (30 secs?). We try to have our mage sheep the warrior but then either a paladin or priest dispels it before I can get them feared with the warrior off of me, or worse there is a paladin and priest and we can't control both.