Scarsoul

I would absolutely respec and run destro in BG's and see how you like it. Learn as you go and keep that spec for at least 20 runs in each and see how that spec performs in each for you. Remember it’s not about DPS/or how many kills you get, it’s about learning what spell to use and when. What class your up against (or 2) and what they prob will do against you. What you can do to help the team in a situation, single fear, Howl, seduce what player, plain DPS someone asap etc. Learn the game and your spec and not be too worried about your personal scoreboard.

 

Bantha

@Greyson CoE from a distance, then Immolate, Conflagrate, CBolt, Incinerate. Glyphed Shadowflame if needed, SF to interrupt / get away. Big numbers, lots of killing blows, good scoreboard.

I've switched to affliction some times lately for BGs just for the heck of it and I gotta say, without destro's burst killing blows are a lot harder to deal. No jumping in, Aftermath someone and burn him to ashes anymore.
I like Affliction. It's consistent, mana effective, and you can deal a lot of dmg with the dots up. But for BGs, destro is the way if you're aiming for the top of the scoreboard. And I like SFury more than insta Howl for the fact that you can aim it 30 yrds ahead.

 

Greyson D.

aight thanks for the info guys, I might decide to switch destro, but after reading a forum on pvping for an afflic lock by a guy named Dusk, on the WoW community site, i think i'll switch back to afflic. alot of the stuff he had to say was really helpful, for example i didnt know that drood trees were banishable, and he gave a macro that made the felhunter's devour magic spell extremely potent... alot of it was common sence stuff that i already knew, but never thought about, but it still helped to read it. I'm not sure how to do a link, but i have it up right now, if i figure out how to link it ill post the link. I'd definately recommend reading it, even if you're already hardcore pvp.Forum post by Dusk hehe found it. it's an old post, not sure when. def. pre-3.2, but still relevant as far as i could tell.

 

Bantha

You know you can dual spec, right?

 

Greyson D.

yeah, i know i CAN, but im savin money to get epic fliers for my chars atm, so i cant afford to spend money for dual spec on a character that is only dps... for now, its just cheaper to just switch til i figure out what i want to do.

 

Mordekhuul

Any tips for a destruction warlock playing with disc in 2's against the harder match-ups? We had particular trouble with rogue/priest if the rogue just sat on me (the warlock) and with double melee DPS teams (which is probably just inexperience).

Additionally, I'd love some insight into good 3v3 comps that include warlock and priest, as we are looking for a 3rd wheel now that our death knight PVP buddy has left the game. Could a good rogue see us through the learning curve and up into gladiator territory if we get our act together? Other options?

I spent a significant amount of time configuring DoTimer for PVP lately, and am happy with it finally, as an aside. It just allows me to do things no other similar mod seemed to. For instance, I have the usual DoT and Cooldown icons anchored to parts of my screen, but also have huge icons just up and to the left of my toon to show major PVP cooldowns like shadowfury and spell lock and another anchor with huge icons up and to the right of my toon to show fear durations and seduce durations on my target or focus targets.

I also recently took advantage of it's ability to show player auras of non-friendlies to have it show durations on defensive buffs that might be up on my current target, like Anti-magic Shell, Divine Shield, Fear Ward, etc - so a big icon appears just above my toon on the screen for any of those...including Spell Reflection from warriors, though I'm thinking the cooldown on spell reflect might be more usefult o track somehow in an obvious way, so I can anticipate when it'll be up.

My lock: Mordekhuul

 

Liox

Hi Mordekhuul,
my first advice would be:
watch these two vids:
Destruction Duel Guide 2 By zUkUu - World of Warcraft Movies (Destruction Duel Guide by Zukuu)
Xmo & Uck 2600+ 2v2 By Xmo - World of Warcraft Movies (Xmo & Uck, 2600er Disc/Destru)

Thats a nice guide for Destruction Warlocks overall

About your Setup:
I never played this setup, so I will simply suggest from how I would play so simply try to do so.
And I have a few questions.
First:
Which Pet do you usually use?
Are you playing with PvE or PvP-Gear? I only saw PvE-Gear on your arsenalchar

When playing against Priest/Rogue you must be aware, that Priests can do a lot of offensive Burstdmg when timed.
So I think they'll try to fear or Drain your Priest while the rogues try to kill you. If you have PvP-Gear, you'll survive the stuns with a few heals, PvE-Gear... well, let's say theres little chance to survive the Stuns.

What could you do?
Your Priest want to be near a pillar or something like that so he can LoS Drains and Heal you up.
Your biggest chance is simply (I suggest so) blowing Pain Suppression, CloS and Fearward. By doing so, you will most likely blow Vanish too. If those CDs are gone, theres nearly no defense left for them.
Fear one and kill the other one. If you have Problems with Rogues in General, watch the video and remind these things:
Use your Port wisely
Try not to run out of los to your Priest
Try not to get caught in a Massfear with your Priest together
Try to get range to the Rogue so he can be Feared, Dotted and Stunned and you can unload your dmg.
While doing so, your Priest should try to Drain or fear the other Priest so he has to take it and heal the Rogue or run away while the Rogue gets Dmg. Then probably doing a switch and use Holy Fire on the Rogue, dependent on Situation.

Those are only suggestions. I hope I could help a little bit.

 

Aer

Probably my biggest weakness in PvP with my warlock is inadequate keybindings. For years my UI has been configured for PvE since that has been my primary focus. I use Dominos as my action bar mod and set up several horizontal 12 button bars keybound to the top row of the keyboard (1 thru =, SHIFT 1 thru SHIFT =, and ALT 1 thru ALT =). I know it's terrible, clunky, and awkward especially in the heat of battle, but I still have the pet bar keybound to the Blizzard default CNTL 1 through CNTL 0. I play with my left hand on the keyboard using W/S to move front/back and Q/E to strafe left/right, and with my right hand I switch between the keyboard and using the mouse to turn my character, swivel the camera angle, and sometimes select targets. I have developed a play style that works well for me in PvE.

With all the nukes, curses, drains, fears, pet commands, trinkets, racials, profession abilities, consumables, bandages, etc, there are many more spells and abilities that need to be readily accessible during PvP than during PvE - ideally with quick, easy to remember keybindings. Target management adds a layer of complexity since many spells have multiple potential targets (such as the felhunter devouring magic off itself, you, your target, or focus target). Most of the multi-target warlock macros I've seen require mouse clicking a macro button while optionally pressing a modifier like SHIFT or ALT. But I'm not a "clicker" and would prefer to stay that way.


WTB Warlock PvP KeyBindings: action bar configurations, pet controls, targeting macros, CC macros, but most importantly their respective keybindings. Any hints or tips that significantly improved your game?

 

Canadianpimp

Yeah, 1 thru = is pretty shit since you really have to stretch to reach past 7 (for me, at least). You take your hands off your movement/strafe keys when you do this, meaning that you don't have full movement while using your abilities. This also let's your right hand to stay on the mouse for movement full time (this will also help immensely in PvE for moving on demand).

Most top arena players that I've seen bind strafe left/right to A and D. This frees up Q and E for keybinds. This is pretty important and by far the most common setup I've seen. It prevents you from ever keyboard turning (very bad habit). I also personally unbind S since backpeddling is also a terrible habit. This frees up another keybind.

Here's my personal setup, I use about 40 keybinds in total. My modifiers are shift and control (I find alt to be clanky). Since it's a lot of keybinds, I like to group similar spells on the same key with modfiers (such as devour myself is V, devour one party member is shift-V). Hopefully this

Destro Setup:
1 - Fear
2 - Incinerate
3 - Corruption
4 - Immolate
5 - Soul Fire (lol)
6 - Life Tap
Shift 1 - Curse of Elements
Shift 2 - Curse of Tongues'
Shift 3 - Curse of Agony
Shift 4 - Drain mana
F1 - Howl of Terror
F2 - Searing Pain
F3 - Shadow Ward
F4 - Banish
Q - Drain life
Shift Q - Death Coil
Control Q - Drain Soul
E - Chaos Bolt
Shift E - Conflagrate
Control E - Totem stomp macro
G - Shadowfury
Shift G - Demonic Teleport
Control G - Create demonic circle
F - Focus Spell lock
Shift F - Shadowburn
Control F - Shadowflame
V - Devour myself
Shift V - Devour one of my teammates
Control V - Devour another teammate
Z - PvP Trinket
Shift Z - Fel Domination
X - Healthstone/Battlemaster's macro
Shift X - DPS trinket
S - Focus fear
Shift S - ground mount
Control S - flying mount
Control 1 - pet attack
Control 2 - pet retreat
Control 3 - spell lock (if I want to spell lock a target that isn't my focus)
Control 4 - Pet stay
Control 5 - pet follow


Hopefully that gives you some examples of keybinds (keybind everything you would ever use in combat) and on what keys to put them on.

 

Eléndar

A gaming mouse would also be a good idea. You can combine its buttons with shift or ctrl &c. for more options. Frees up your hands for movement and means you only have to use the nearest possible buttons on the keyboard. In conjunction with the bindpad addon (this is indispensable IMO) it is a very powerful tool. I use keybinds for both PVE and PVP because with the amount of movement in raids like Ulduar you need to be able to move freely and use abilities on the go. For the warlock I find these useful (they're all based on the pet):

This one's especially useful:

Pressing shift, alt or ctrl + the button assigned will modify the pet behaviour and perform actions according to which is out.

I keybind pet actions to one of the mouse's side buttons and modify as needed.

 

Mordekhuul

I recommend binding a mouse button to act as the "alt" key. For me, it is my mouse thumb button, as it is easy to press and keep pressed while doing other things with the mouse.

Doing this gave me half again as many easy-to-hit keybindings while my left hand is in normal typing position and my right hand is on the mouse (standard practice).

Shift is a pretty easy modifier to hit with your left hand in normal typing position, but alt is quite awkward, normally. Binding a mouse key to "alt" makes it very easy, however, even to hit alt- versions of number keys (alt-5, etc).

 

Shayo

I just wanted to mention that Rogue/Warlock/Shaman is an extremely viable comp in 3s at the moment. This season is the first season I haven't felt like we had a hard counter, although hunter/ret/priest may be close to one. We tend to dominate PMR, which seems to be a fairly common team. DK, pally, warrior cleave is also pretty much a guaranteed win when we don't have communication issues. So far we're only up to 1800 rating, but for the first time since WotLK started, I'm not sure there is a rating ceiling that isn't imposed by our skill (rather than our team make up).

 

Aer

Thanks for the tips - I appreciate the feedback. I've been playing with the 1 through = style for almost 4 years, so it's going to be a major PITA to train myself to push different buttons. But it's definitely worth trying because my currernt setup is all about fail when I'm under pressure.

Canadianpimp:
Why is backpeddling a bad habit? I can think of so many occasions when moving away from your target while still facing them to be able to cast has been an extremely effective tactic.

Eléndar:
All these macros require you to mouse click the macro button when using a modifier, correct? For example if you had a Devour macro bound to Q and a Spell Lock macro bound to Shift Q, the only way to access the Devour shift modifier would be clicking the button because pressing Q would trigger the Spell Lock macro. I was hoping to avoid having to mouse click action bars - is there no getting around this?

 

Mordekhuul

You can strafe in a straight line away from someone (being turned sideways to them) at full speed while still casting anything you could cast while directly facing them.

I happen to keep S bound to back up, although I am almost always using my A and D keys to strafe (as suggested earlier), just because I sometimes want to nudge myself back a few steps, not turn and strafe farther, but if your goal is to create distance while casting on the move, back-pedaling is the slowest way to do it.

Stand in the fire? CHAOS BOLT!

 

Eléndar

No, the point of the macro is to combine as many possible actions as possible into one spot which can be varied according to which of the modifiers is pressed. TBH it's very easy to use with a mouse's side-button, to which the macro can be bound (bia bindpad perhaps.)

 

Skellingtoon

How do you stop the 'shift-2' command from simply changing your action bar to bar 2?

Also, has anyone else had issues with LoS on a demonic circle? Occasionally in Blades' Edge arena, I can't port to a circle on the other side of a pillar.

 

Canadianpimp

Yes, RLS is probably the strongest warlock comp this and last season. I played it up to 2400 last season. I wrote a guide on the comp if anyone is interested.

3v3 guide: Rogue/lock/shaman - The Warlocks Den - WoW Warlock Discussions

 

Shayo

Yeah I was looking for that link yesterday to add to my post but couldn't find it. It's a great guide, thanks for taking the time to write it. We've been using it pretty heavily as a starting point for discussions about comps. One thing we noticed is that your guide has a distinct lack of talk about hunter teams. The videos I've seen have always shown the rogue and the warlock jumping on the hunter to try for a quick kill, but I was curious how you guys handled comps like hunter/priest/retadin. With flares and consecration to pop rogues out of stealth, it's hard for the rogue to properly open on someone if the opposing team is smart (and in the higher brackets they prettty much are by default). What are your thoughts on some of the more common hunter comps?

 

Canadianpimp

At the time I wrote the guide (after S6), hunters were pretty nonexistent in arena and didn't have many popular 3s comps. The only hunter team we consistently faced was at 2700-2800 rating playing MM hunter/aff warlock/resto shaman. I see them all the time now, especially with the rise of beast cleave (BM hunter/enh sham/healer).

Our strategy against hunters is pretty elementary. We blind the hunter to force a trinket, wait for kidney shot and spell lock to be up, and do a hard switch with CC and usually kill the hunter in the kidney. Even if you don't kill him in the kidney, you can usually CC and interrupt the healer long enough to last his deterrence, then finish off the hunter.

Against BM hunters, we generally do the same thing, but we have to wait through his Beast Within. Make sure your rogue dismantles the hunter during his TBW and you should live through it just fine so you can blind then switch to him after.

 

Sumie

My simple guide to keybinding for PvP. This can apply to any class, but will use warlocks as the template. This is also assuming you use WASD movement. If you use arrow keys or numpad, you may want a different configuration:

1) WASD movement should really be WAD movement, since you should never use S to backpedal. Always strafe backwards. There are situations where backpedaling may be helpful, but it's really only in PvE. In PvP, you pretty much never want to backpedal, so simply unbinding it will help you to remember to strafe backwards.

2) Some people bind strafe to 'A' and 'D'. THIS IS NOT NEEDED. Leave 'A' and 'D' for turn left and turn right, and when you want to strafe, simply hold right mouse-click anywhere on the screen, and you will strafe left and strafe right using the same two buttons. In fact, since most top PvP'ers will simply bind every ability to a key, there's really no reason to ever click anything with your mouse, allowing you to have your right mouse-click held down 90% of the time.

3) Bind important abilities near your WAD movement keys. These should be abilities you use most often (Lifetap, Corruption, etc), escape abilities you need to access quickly and not be fumbling keys for (Teleport, instant Howl or Shadowfury, Death Coil), and abilities that you need to time well (ie. Spell-lock). As an example, my Corruption is bound to C, my Lifetap to TAB, my teleport to R, Shadowfury to Q, Spell-lock target to E, Spell-lock focus to F, Death Coil to Z.

4) Only bind 1-6. Anything past 6 should be abilities that are hardly used or not used in the thick of combat. For example, buffs like Detect Invis can be safely thrown on hotkey 8-0. I never use Rain of Fire except to catch a stealthed rogue so I keep that bound to 7.

5) Use Shift + Ctrl abilities for everything else. A lot of my devour magic macros are bound to Shift + 1-3 etc.

6) This is my personal preference, but I make use of the extra action pages that Blizzard gives us. I really only need one extra page anyway. Abilities that are important to PvP but not used very often, I throw on action page 2, and have it bound to Alt + 2 to change bars. This way, I can toss summons and armor spells on page 2, and they're still bound to keys that are close to WAD (ie. my Corruption, which is bound to C on page 1, becomes Fel Armor on page 2). I make use of this more often on my hybrid toons like healers, having heals on one action page, and DPS spells on the other. Note, you don't really lose DPS time by switching pages. Once you get used to the configuration, you can easily swap bars while you're under the GCD, losing no effective DPS time.

 

Canadianpimp

I'd advise against this. There are still times where you need to strafe and use your mouse to do something in game (no, not clicking your abilities). If you don't have strafe keys bound, you're limited to things like shadowfurying on the run, mouseover macros on the run. clicking the mage's target on gladius because he popped mirror images, etc. Not having strafe keys bound hinders your movement.

 

Shayo

Right clicking to take out a totem on the run. Since this is mainly a discussion about keybindings/macros, I also want to advocate having a macro set up for devour. Instead of 3 macros for each party member, use a hoverover macro and just learn to use it (something I don't think you can easily do with the above mentioned method). It took me a while, but I feel like I'm a better player for doing it now that I've played with it that way for a while. I use Pitbull also for my raid frames, so I was able to easily configure the debuff section so it's easier to see who's sheeped. I personally have it bound to the "r" key, so that it's easy to reach - you'll hit it a lot with an 8 second cool down.

But anyway, after a week or so break from pvping, we went back in last week and got rofl stomped by one particular comp. 15-11 for the night, 8 losses to pally/dk/warrior. Anyone else having problems with this comp recently (that didn't have very many problems against them a month ago) or is it just the result of fighting more 2k-2200 rated teams?

 

Marcates

I have been reading alot of this thread and would like some input on how to get a comprehensive language logic and design and maybe include a list of commands. I am new to PvP but have every intention of getting "Battlemaster" title. As soon as I stop pointlessly clicking, I'm going to tackle macros so I would love to get a fresh perspective. Deep affliction for Life! -Marcates

 

sckeener

Search isn't helping me and I'm not seeing this mentioned, but is there a list of good enchantments for pvping locks? such as listing the best and the runner up enchant in case the lock doesn't have exalted with that faction yet.

 

Pyrilus

Macros you might find helpful are found here.