Ive found the counter to Dk/Pal! Meta/ruin & rogue.......Im running full pvp gear roughly 815 resil and rogue is running full pve gear...Ass spec.


Basically start out sap dk.....blind dk.....burn pally to bubble....pop meta eat up the dk...many times with wound poison the pal cant keep the dk alive during the burst of meta. If he keeps the dk alive hes in a shitload of trouble when his bubble ends.....my rogue will prep and re stunnlock and its lights out on the paladin. HEalth stones will hit for full vs this team and drain life is your friend vs the reanimated dk.

You're forgetting the part where I use my instant fear to keep you cc'ed for the duration of your meta

I am not 100% sure if anyone asked this yet:

What gems should be used as a Warlock? Right now I am almost at 22k Health thanks to a lot of Pvp Gear and the exclusive use of +24 Stamina gems and Stamina enchants.

But i was wondering if this is the right way.

I am not sure about the math and logic seeing as a lot of the dmg you take is noncrit or dosen't even count as crit like our Pandemic "crits". Plus the 20 resilience gems always seemed inferior to me, when compared with the 24 stamina gems.

What do you guys use?

In the past resilience gems > stamina gems. You only needed enough stamina to keep yourself from getting bursted. The key to survival was stacking resilience until cap. Right now, I’m just waiting it out. I really see no point until some significant changes are made. You can theorycraft all you want, but the results are the same. GIB

PTR Patch 3.0.8 - Build 9438

As a destro afficionado (albeit a slowly leveling one) there's some morsels in there. New conflag glyph is long, long overdue and teleport breaking snares will help a good deal. We're not fixed, but life is getting better.

I was wondering how I should socket for PVP. I have almost all epic gear. Should I go all resilience or stamina despite socket bonuses? Or should I get spellpower as well?

In terms of meta, should I get stun resist, or spell damage, or stamina?

I've been mulling over our current predicament in regards to PvP and there's a few thoughts that I'd like some feedback on in regards to a (few) growing concern(s) of mine.

Let's say they fix survivability. Let's say we don't die in 10-15 seconds regardless of what we do, and let's say they also fix our pets so they don't die whenever someone looks at them crosswise. Will that be enough to get us back to were we were right before WotlK? (which based on numbers/experience I'd say was a fairly balanced state, possibly a bit on the low-side when discounting the effects resto-druid synergy, but certainly not the worst class)

What's starting to worry the hell out of me is the way our offense has changed, or not changed for destruction, come WotlK. Let's start with affliction; SL/SL - survivability aside - got around using 3 instant cast DoTs backed by the drains, depending on what we faced. This damage was dispellable and forseeable, but in return it's damage fairly easy to spread and maintain on multiple targets.

While the 3 instants are still there, and doing more damage, a considerably higher portion of the DoT based damage of an affliction build requires cast time spells via Haunt and and the new Shadow Embrace. These are not easy to get off on a single-target in most PvP situations, much less on multiple targets, and yet they're now an integral part of DoT DPS scaling. It works for PvE, but the complexity in keeping it up in PvP just isn't viable.
The fact that DoT's can crit is also a mixed blessing; Only corruption and UA are affected, and the chances of me reliably keeping UA goes downwards pretty fast in most situations. But our PvP gear itemization, unlike previous seasons, is now partially spent on crit. Speaking of itemization, there's spirit which is translated to DPS via Fel Armor, but if we have to throw off Fel Armor for survivability in Demon Armor, we're hamstringing (if you'll pardon the pun) our offense further. Our crowd control is also significantly down in effeciency, in part due to cast-time constraints and in part due to more immunities/preventions in other classes. To summarize;

• Affliction has an increased dependance on single-school cast-time spells in a metagame where interrupts/silences/cast-time increases are more common than ever.
• We're spending item budget points on things we're unable to utilize fully due to said cast-time dependance - points that we did not previously spend.
• CC as a defense has decreased in viability, time-on-target for classes with interrupts has gone up. Less useful casting.

Moving on to destruction; There's less of a school-dependancy, so forcing a school lockout is less of a problem. On the other hand, the instants that are available for continiou DPS sare less potent. Getting some kind of useful offense off is still hard, much for the same reasons as affliction, except added in something that was pointed out to me in the beta that I didn't believe at the time; Poor talent synergy. The spells are there for a real killer combo, but the damage output of a pre-planned, CD-using Destruction burst chain is - even under near-idealized conditions - not that big compared to neither possible healing, health-of-target or other's DPS output under similar conditions . The new conflag glyph will help a bit, but I doubt'll be enough. Putting it in bulletpoints again;

• Cast-time dependancy for DPS output still means that destruction warlocks, with limited escape options, gets little continous DPS done,
• Talent synergy with burst spells means that the burst isn't all that impressive either. The spells are there, the damage isn't.

I havn't tried Demo in WotlK so I havn't given it the same kind of thought. I'd say the same cast-time issue's affect it, though pet survivability is probably an even bigger issue than for the other two.


Thoughts? Am I blowing up a non-issue and we'll be fine as soon "survivability is fixed" or is our survivability issues just masking the deeper problem?

Yes, we are more dependent on Haunt/UA + the usual instants. However, if Blizzard is taking a look at our complicated Affliction rotations then I would imagine this would get fixed in the process. I am able to get a full rotation going in BGs, but of course I fight like a girl in the BGs … It’s the only way I know for now. I typically get a full rotation going while an alliance is going “toe 2 toe” with another horde. I know , sad.

I don't really know. We got nerfed big time, when Wotlk came out, so at least they could undo those nerfs and see how it works out (Give felpuppy paranoia back, +healing on fel armor, increased stamina on our pvp sets).
If I were a developer, I wouldn't even know where to start on fixing warlocks.
Warlocks are a problem per design. We are supposed to outlast our enemies, to tank melee, to wear them down slowly. Every other class wins through burst or quick CC chains on the healer. Right now it feels for me as if I'm playing a totally different game than the rest of wow - and I am on the short end. This is not whining or anything, this is just my personal experience.
On the stamina/resilience gem topic: Go for stamina. I noticed a difference in survivability going from 20k hp to 23k hp, but it was almost the same going from 700 to 900 resilience (300 stamina and 200 resilience are about the same in terms of itembudget). Resilience helps to counter steady, incoming damage. Stamina helps to counter burst. Go for pure stamina.

I wouldn't want Paranoia back if it ment that they take it away from the VW. When I started doing Pvp in Wotlk and saw how fast i was dieing even with an Aff/Demo (incl. UA) spec, i started useing the VW instead of the Felhound.

Multiple Reasons:

1. In Arena and in the BGs, healers are not that much of a Problem anymore. In Bc healing was crazy op so getting that one silence in a critical moment was always the match winner. In Wotlk it 'can' be the matchwinner but most of the time you are fighting to stay alive so you can start doing something.

2. You don't need it that much against other casters. Either the 3-6 seconds wouldn't have mattert because they just destroy you afterwards, or the fight is almost balanced and the Bubble from the VW took the dmg you would have prevented with the silence.

3. He dies much faster compared to the VW and can't be saced for any significant buff before he dies. Unlike the VW.

4. He is useless against Melee.


I like the VW in Pvp very much. Also multiple Reasons:

1. He can take a beating but usually dosen't have to as he is no threat.

2. If you Sacrifice him, the Shield will absorb 8500 dmg (untalented!) which in my eyes is a lot considering a lot of Melees dish out damage in bursts.

3. In an arena setting you know when there is a stealthed enemy in the other team so you can spam his paranoia.

4. He can debuff melees with a -10% Hit debuff although only once every 2 minutes.


The great thing is that it dosen't matter what kind of class your Enemy is unlike with the Felpuppy which will only help you against casters and even then it depends on the situation.

---

Regardings Gems:
So everybody is going for max Stamina and dosen't use +20 resilience gems?

Do you guys know anything about gemming? Should I focus on resilience or stamina?

How about metas? Should I get the power earthsiege diamond with +32 stamina (but requires 3 blues) or the trenchant earthsiege diamond with +25 spellpower?

The way I figure is that if stamina is more important, I'd meet the requirement for blue sockets by using stamina or resilience gems so that the power earthsiege diamond is a nobrainer. However if resilience is more important, I'd use the +16/+20 resilience gems which will make using the stamina meta much harder.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I believe you can gain enough spell penetration from weapons and cloak enchant to not need any gems.

Ok, rogues/dks/ret pallys have had some nerfs. Time to open the thread for discussion again?

Over the weekend I specced meta/ruin using felguard/corr/CoA glyphs. I'd never played meta before (affliction ftw) and I sucked at it, but even still we went 20-15. We lost the first five simply because my partner and I needed to figure out how to adjust our playstyle to the new spec (and I was starting to figure out keybindings). I found a decent tutorial on how to set up bartender4 with the meta spec so that your action bar changes when you pop it. After figuring out the basics, we went 20-10, so it wasn't too bad. Of course, we are in a really low ratings bracket.

Vs. dps/healer:
If the dps targets me, I tend to ignore them. With the +3% resil from talents (roughly equal to +246 resil), my resto shaman partner can keep me up through just about any melee dps. I dot everything and cast drain mana on the healer. Sick the felguard on the healer. Fear the dps as needed, but typically don't really need to. When their healer is OOM I pop meta, charge, immo aura, SB. Dots stay up. Drain life as needed. If they target my partner, i fear the healer and distract the melee. This might be the wrong tactic, I'm not sure (which is why I'm posting here).

Vs. double dps we just stay alive. Eventually they die.

Vs. DK/x teams, we kill the x. There's no way I can burst down a DK. Gratuitous use of fear happens in this fight.

Now, I understand that the majority of high rated warlock teams are shaman/lock or druid/lock, but most of the warlock specs i've seen have been haunt/SL. How does this spec defeat warrior/x teams? I don't understand how to win as affliction against this comp. Warrior shits on warlock, eventually warlock dies. I just couldn't make it happen. Maybe I'm missing something. If you use demon armor as affliction, you're missing out on 300~ spell power. I like to think I'm moderately geared for pvp at this point but I'm only showing 1600 spell power with demon armor.

Anyway, if you're having any success in arenas these days I'm sure a lot of us are interested in what it is that you're doing.

I had some good results this weekend with a ret pally on 2s and a resto shaman/dk on 3s. I was specced as a pve meta/ruin (no resi talent). My gear goes around 350 resi and 19,2k hp. I had some experience before with fully pve gear and got really frustrated against dps doubles on 2s, I was burned really fast, but now with minimum gear I was able to hold a beat. I predict things will get ugly when I hit around 700 resi.

On 2s healer setup I just CC the healer and CoT him while my partner burned down the dps, easy cake there. Then we got a dual rogue setup, It was funny how fast they got burned. We had a few problems with a frost mage/shadow priest (!) setup, our plan was to burn down the priest but he was way overgeared and I wasn't dispelling anything since my FG was out, and the frost mage was kitting around my partner.

On 3s we had some hard time figuring out how to play our setup, but when I started to get used to CC the healer and burn down the dk target we started to shine. We had problems when they focused me, mainly when a hunter was in the arena.

I enjoyed playing this spec and intend to keep it, need to farm some more gear thou. And they need to fix will of the forsaken not working on turn evil.

CoEx, yay or nay?

See multiple locks in sk100 don't have it. I'm gonna respecc for PvP soon and would appreciate hearing peoples experience with this curse in this season.

CoEx reduces the target's movement speed by 30% for 12 sec, so I can see people ignoring it since it is not a powerful slow compared to others.

The three Locks I have seen at 2k rating all used CoA with glyph.

With the lock changes in 3.0 ( mainly the changes to conflag ), will we see destruction being viable in pvp again ?

On one hand, Molten Skin + Glyphed Soul Link + Netherprotection is going to be an awesome tank - to a point where I wonder if Blizzard really thought that one through properly.

On the other hand, you can go Dest Soul Link today - which means Dest already has more defenses than it had in TBC - and there hasn't really been a great surge in popularity still. I tried it when everyone was low resilience and retpaladins were blowing everyone up and I can't say I was particularly impressed. The spells are there, the damage/talent synergy just ain't.

The fact is that while defenses is a major part of what hurts a warlock, making Soul Link available to every tree and still having 90%+ of the serious PvP warlocks go Haunt/SL is a pretty compelling piece of evidence for the importance of cast time. We were SL/SL in TBC, we're Haunt SL now. The common denominators is Soul Link and DoTs, and even with SL available to all specs we're still going for the DoTs. Instant cast damage for a class obeying "the mail paradox" is too important to pass up in a metagame where practically every single melee is designed around punishing casters for staying in range via interrupts/pushback.

Destruction, even with buffed defenses, has a hard time outputing the sustained damage of a Haunt spec, and has some trouble with the burst as well (Although there's a frost mage/dest warlock at 2.5K in some battlegroup or other with the amusingly appropriate team name of "ye that just happened").


We'll probably see an increase in Destruction in Double-DPS in 2v2s at least, playing with someone who can buy them the breathing time for a Chaos Bolt, but beyond that I'm mostly doubtful. It'll probably be an awesome battleground trick though.

I'm currently looking at this for 3.1 pvp:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...0&version=9658

glyph of shadowflame/soullink/immolate

pretty decent kiting abilities. Anyone else looking at destro for 3.1 ?

Immolate will be extremely powerful in that build, dot modifiers:

6% Aftermath
20% Glyph
30% Imp Immo
15% Emberstorm

300 dmg Fire and brimstone (With 2000 spellpower assuming that one doesn't use Fel Armor)

Anyone care to calculate how much damage one Immolate will crit/hit for with 2000 spellpower?

My current spec in 3.08 is [Warlock 3.08 17/11/43]. I have enjoyed it so far over the Haunt/SL build that i previously had, i had a lot of issues really killing anything and it wasn't that much fun for me in the bg, but when i switched to destro i felt i had an easier time keeping people off me due to having an extra stun, but i also felt i was able to help burst people down better than when i was affliction. overall this spec has been fun for me and i am looking to continue exploring and playing with it as i move into 3.1.

The specs that i am currently planning for 3.1 are:
[Warlock 3.1 17/12/42]
[Warlock 3.1 24/3/44]

The first is essentially a modified version of my 3.08 spec, but it is obviously better due to the changes in 3.1. The 2nd is a version without soul link, intended for use only by people heavily pvp geared, as the tools you are trading will provide survivability as well but differently. You essentially get nightfall procs, Empowered Corruption, siphon life, CoEx, & Backdraft, at the loss of soul link, fel dom, and some pet buff stuff. Seemed like a solid build so i saved it in the case i feel i can afford to lose Soul link.

just some thoughts, since you asked if anyone else was thinking about pvp specs post 3.1 ;p

dropping soul-link never seems like a good option to me.