I've recently started playing a leftover warlock with mediocre gear and am currently in the process of equipping him with competitive gear to have a shot at arenas. I'm currently investing all of my time playing various battlegrounds, the respective battleground during honor weekends and random battlegrounds for tokens/honor. I made a spreadsheet comparing my current gear with possible upgrades and evaluated the necessary cost (time investment depending on honor cost and token requirement) vs. the effective stats increase to determine the best possible upgrade order.
The thing I was wondering about was if I should include some form of arena into the upgrade process. I have currently no experience with arena point gains and I don't have the gear to expect any kind of rating increases. Suppose I would participate in the lower brackets (2on2 or maybe 3on3) and would lose most of the time, would that give me any significant amount of arena points to get gladiator gear and would the time investment be justified?
I read in this thread that someone was working on a gear-guide for people who missed the first arena season and I am very much looking forward to that guide. Basically my whole question revolves around the best possible time investment/upgrade order to reach a competitive level as fast as possible.
There really is no reason not to start running arenas as soon as possible. Even a few points a week will add up, and let you start purchasing the gear sooner. 10 games a week (or even as few as 3, depending on the team) takes no more than one or two hours with standard queue times and match lengths and stands to earn you a high quality epic in about 4-6 weeks with a low rating. I'm pretty sure if you're shooting for the best time per upgrade, an arena peice for about 10 hours invested is the best way to go.
Definately get into some arenas. I didnt in S1 except maybe two weeks worth. Then I quit because I figured I'd get most upgrades via PVE, well in all my time in Kara I've only seen the spell blade drop twice and both times I lost roll. Now Kara is run with alts.. Warlock drops for us have been far an few in between every where else we've been. In Kara I only saw the helm drop once and I've been in there every week since about a two months after TBC released.
I do arenas now and we do only about 10 games and get about 300-360 points per week some times more. Definately worth the time investment.
Can someone please tell me if the Felhunter's devour magic is able to dispel Polymorph/fear and if there is a macro I could write to do that. Do most people just put it on autocast and have it strip off buffs from the target or try to micromanage it? Right now I just have it on autocast and let him do his thing, but I don't think I'm using the full capability. If it could dispel sheep etc. this is quite powerful for those times when your paladin yells out "I'm sheeped and there is nothing I can do".
I'd recommend getting Clique. Since I'm using shift as my main modifier, I bound shift-leftclick to spell lock and shift-rightclik to dispel. Works wonders, especially when you keep a focus frame up.
Curse of Recklessness is brutal on Priests in 5v5. Any two physical DPS on them and that -800 armor, combined with good purging of their shield buffs is amazing. It makes bringing them down a ton easier. Less useful vs. Mages & Warlocks for more obvious reasons. Both have either decurse options or (in most cases) Soul Link. Warlocks pretty much always get Tongues from me anyway.
Hello , I've got a simple question. After running around 20 games today (1900 rating) and ending against a lot of war + shaman, I do have a question. I was teaming with a shaman too ( fairly undergeared for now) instead of my usual druid partner and the fights usually ended with both shaman beeing dead soooo....
How the hell are you supposed to kill a warrior that know what he is doing? Thats downright impossible even assuming all your cd are up, I got ripped apart every time but once. Sometimes in 3 sec ( hello to you full rage bar) and thats with soul link, 11K3 pv et 310 resilience. Short of poping a succubus and praying he doesn't one shot it while seducing ( dot specced soo kind of useless too) is there a solution ? ( I m specced 24/37 and have the affliction curse which snare but thats totally useless when the war can just intercept and harmstrings you again)
When facing a warrior 1 on 1 I rarely have a problem (actually I can't remember the last time I had a problem).
Typically I will put up Siphon Life, Curse of Agony, and Corruption.
Following this, I start a drain life, and immediately cancel it after the first tick. Most skilled warriors will immediately hit their pummel, so as to be hit by as few drain life ticks as possible (and to lock the rest of my shadow spells out), however since I'm not casting at the time the pummel hits due to stopping my own cast, I can immediately resume drain life tanking. This gives me time for 2 full drain lives before his pummel is back up, at which point the warrior is normally close to dead from the DoTs ticking on him, and I've gained around 4000 or more health from the drain lives.
Is there a mod that will show when Pummel/Kicks go off? I have trouble seeing the stupid character animation so I never know when I can safely resuming draining.
All I really want is a mod that will track "X's Pummel hits you for Y," "X's Pummel crits you for Y," etc from the combat log and alert me to when it goes off.
Is there a mod that will show when Pummel/Kicks go off? I have trouble seeing the stupid character animation so I never know when I can safely resuming draining.
All I really want is a mod that will track "X's Pummel hits you for Y," "X's Pummel crits you for Y," etc from the combat log and alert me to when it goes off.
If you use SCT (I don't know how someone couldn't, but that is just me) turn on the "Spell/Skill Name" option in the animation menu. Will show the damage and what skill caused it.
Well..... Upon looking at the new S2 bonus on the test server, I noticed that every single piece of our armor has lost armor and gained between 3 and 4 intellect... I don't remember warlock asking for that, losing 4% absorb dmg for huh 300 mana? Well thats fairly insulting I guess, I already have enough problems with war/rogue in 2vs2, range dps are the ones that get in troubles against locks, not melee.... Guess they followed the mage changes ( xept mage got + dmg/crit also). Not sure if priest set got nerf.
My guess is they thought armor was too high and that season 3 will have the old S2 armor in order to match the armor penetration melee will have.
Didn't see this posted, so I figured I'd add it. This works well for 3s, but I haven't tried it for anything else. This requires you to be felguard specced (so 7/43/11 or some variant).
Almost every healer will burn their trinket to break a fear with you and your warrior/other focusing on one of their teammates. So take out a felhunter to start with. Go through the motions of dotting the assist and controlling their healer. Once they burn through that trinket, you can spell lock them for 3-6 seconds. Immediately after, quicksummon a felguard, and once the silence wears off, have him intercept. Three seconds after that, death coil. Finish it up with a fear. Somewhere inbetween you can get off a shadowburn, dot ticks, and maybe a searing pain or a few ticks of drain life. But (and I admit it's tricky), perfectly executed, you have effectively locked down their primary healer for 9-12 seconds completely. This combo becomes infinitely easier to execute when you macro things, like target focusing the healer. I set both spell lock and intercept to the same focus keybind (q) and my /cast fel domination /cast summon felguard macro to shift+w. So with minimal effort and time lost it can be pulled off. If you want to pool it together with other cc, you can obviously chain the lockdown for even longer.
Maybe this was a well known trick, but I just considered it, and figured I'd share for the newbs who didn't know.
Didn't see this posted, so I figured I'd add it. This works well for 3s, but I haven't tried it for anything else. This requires you to be felguard specced (so 7/43/11 or some variant).
Almost every healer will burn their trinket to break a fear with you and your warrior/other focusing on one of their teammates. So take out a felhunter to start with. Go through the motions of dotting the assist and controlling their healer. Once they burn through that trinket, you can spell lock them for 3-6 seconds. Immediately after, quicksummon a felguard, and once the silence wears off, have him intercept. Three seconds after that, death coil. Finish it up with a fear. Somewhere inbetween you can get off a shadowburn, dot ticks, and maybe a searing pain or a few ticks of drain life. But (and I admit it's tricky), perfectly executed, you have effectively locked down their primary healer for 9-12 seconds completely. This combo becomes infinitely easier to execute when you macro things, like target focusing the healer. I set both spell lock and intercept to the same focus keybind (q) and my /cast fel domination /cast summon felguard macro to shift+w. So with minimal effort and time lost it can be pulled off. If you want to pool it together with other cc, you can obviously chain the lockdown for even longer.
Maybe this was a well known trick, but I just considered it, and figured I'd share for the newbs who didn't know.
To be honest, I've NEVER liked the felguard in any bracket. The utility of dispelling a feared/sheeped healer, and ranged spell lock is far superior to the damage the felguard brings, along with you losing key talents in other trees such as soul siphon, fel concentration, coex, and siphon life. If you are 23/38, and feel as if they won't kill your pet, start with a felhunter out, then after it's spell lock is used, fel dom another felhunter out. It is much more effective than summoning another felguard, as it's spell lock cooldown is immeadiately up, and you can switch between fearing one target and cs'ing another instantly to cc two members of the team.
Does anyone know whether or not they will add the ability to get soul shards off same faction in arena? It is so frustrating going through 5 shards a game in 5's guaranteed when I face against a horde team, when each of those shadowburns would have given me a shard if used against alliance.
Yeah I don't really like him either, but my resilience limits what I can do right now, and so I'm forced to stay in a soul-linked spec. 23/38 didn't have appeal due to its complete lack of burst and terrible assistability (let me help the assist bursting with... drain life!), so shadowburn's basically a must now. 23/38 was great for 2s, but its diminished value in higher brackets and raiding really turned it off for me.
As for the shards question, I haven't heard anything about it, so I doubt they're gonna implement it any time soon, if at all. =/
EDIT: I also submit that I am a relative newb, and your ratings in every bracket blow mine completely out of the water, so I don't know if that invalidates what I'm saying.
To be honest, I've NEVER liked the felguard in any bracket.
Does anyone know whether or not they will add the ability to get soul shards off same faction in arena?
For 1900+ play, Felhunter is just a better pet, however not everyone that reads these forums plays at that level, so the advise given above may help them out. Especially with the FG's added dps.
The game mechanics (only giving shards when you would gain xp or honor) would have to be changed to get same faction shards.
The devs said they will never allow same faction BGs, so they will likely never fix the shard issue. Shards are not hard to get, so just get like 40 before doing some Arenas.
For 1900+ play, Felhunter is just a better pet, however not everyone that reads these forums plays at that level, so the advise given above may help them out. Especially with the FG's added dps.
This is exactly the experience I had with Felguard. Last season I did up to about 1900ish as Felguard and then realized that a Felhunter was as good or better than a Felguard in almost every matchup we'd see. For lower rating brackets, where people don't have 400 resil to negate his crit rate, and you can bring someone to 50% before Intercept wears off, the Felguard damn powerful pet. For someone starting out arenas, especially those playing double DPS with anything but a Shadow Priest, I strongly recommend a Felguard spec.
I suppose it makes sense. By the time you're skilled/geared enough for a 1900 bracket you'll likely have the gear reqs to switch to something less reliant on soul link. Like UA.
I’m playing with a holy priest, (11.5k HPs, 170 resilience unbuffed, 1700-1800 rating)
In fact I was starting thinking on a 24/37/0 build before I met pallies dispelling every drain I could do. As almost 40% of the team we meet are Warrior/paladin and being focused most of the time I believe –without conviction- UA is superior to soul link in those configurations.
I decided to go deeper in demonology to grab demonic aegis and fell stamina instead of bane and Shadowburn to survive.
Hmm, concerning the tactic, I would gladly hear any suggestion too. Before that I used to be fellguard speced and trying to nuke the warrior while fearing the healer, but the results were at the most average.
Give or take 2 points in suppression depending on your hit.
The only thing you're missing out on in the classic 43/7/11 build is shadowburn, and since you are specifying a build based solely around 2v2 with a healer, you won't miss it too much. If you plan to 3v3 or 5v5 at all though, the lack of an instant "ASSIST KILL" move like shadowburn will hurt a lot. In my opinion, a quick searing pain/death coil + shadowburn combo, along with your other teammates, can win a match.
Is there a mod that will show when Pummel/Kicks go off? I have trouble seeing the stupid character animation so I never know when I can safely resuming draining.
All I really want is a mod that will track "X's Pummel hits you for Y," "X's Pummel crits you for Y," etc from the combat log and alert me to when it goes off.
If you have sounds on, pummel and kick have very distinct sound effect when they go off.
I think this was asked by someone else before but I never saw a response to it. I essentially have the same question. Currently I have about 9300 HP 998 spell damage 100 resillience. This week I should have enough points to get the Robes. My question is at this point in the game for me, gear wise should I simply stack stam gems or go with resillience gems. On a side note I should have the Vets Belt this week too.
Follow up to my question a few weeks back. I've bumped my resillience to about 264 I'll have the Glad gloves Tuesday so I'll be at over 305 resillience. I also plan to get the Halaa pants to hold me over until I get gladiator pants so I'll be at 355 resillience by the end of the week. Is there a resillience cap for warlocks? I never have found an anwser to this. I know a few of the warlocks on my server stack stam gems instead of the resillience and they insist it has better returns than resillience gems for warlocks. Is this true? What do you guys think?
Looking for a bit of advice on a particular setup / match-up.
I run with a Holy priest in 2v2. We started two weeks ago, and haven't been doing too badly. (1800 first day we started)
Most teams we can handle - some fights just take longer than others. However, there are two combos we struggle with and haven't yet come up with a reliable tactic for. Restro druid + Warrior, and Resto shammy + warrior. In both cases, it was a well geared MS warrior with Stormherald. (</3 that thing)
With the druid team, we happened to play in Nagrand. The druid happily bounced around out of LoS behind the pillars, while the warrior beat on me incessantly. If I CoEX'd, the druid would hop out to decurse. If my priest tried to mana burn, he'd LoS, or pop into bear and stun, or just plain cyclone spam. All the while my fears are locked down by the warrior who is doing some crazy damage to me (I have 378 res and 12k hp). If my healer stops to heal (which he obviously needs to) he gets chain cycloned. I can't keep the druid in LoS long enough to drain him, between renew spam and his large regen he doesn't OOM.. I dunno, this just seems like a downhill battle. The most success we've had is kiting the warrior across the arena so the druid has to follow. At this point I managed to deathcoil the warrior, fear the druid and take about 40% of his HP off (lucky fear) before he came out of it, insta healed himself, popped a rejuv on the warrior and went back to the nearest pillar. Any ideas on how to beat this combo?
Shammy + warr we found equally difficult, for different reasons. Grounding totems, warrior interrupts, pally earthshocking my priest and the warrior pumping out some crazy damage didn't help anything. This seems slightly more winnable, but it seems like a tough matchup nevertheless. Any tips here too?
Looking for a bit of advice on a particular setup / match-up.
I run with a Holy priest in 2v2. We started two weeks ago, and haven't been doing too badly. (1800 first day we started)
Most teams we can handle - some fights just take longer than others. However, there are two combos we struggle with and haven't yet come up with a reliable tactic for. Restro druid + Warrior, and Resto shammy + warrior. In both cases, it was a well geared MS warrior with Stormherald. (</3 that thing)
With the druid team, we happened to play in Nagrand. The druid happily bounced around out of LoS behind the pillars, while the warrior beat on me incessantly. If I CoEX'd, the druid would hop out to decurse. If my priest tried to mana burn, he'd LoS, or pop into bear and stun, or just plain cyclone spam. All the while my fears are locked down by the warrior who is doing some crazy damage to me (I have 378 res and 12k hp). If my healer stops to heal (which he obviously needs to) he gets chain cycloned. I can't keep the druid in LoS long enough to drain him, between renew spam and his large regen he doesn't OOM.. I dunno, this just seems like a downhill battle. The most success we've had is kiting the warrior across the arena so the druid has to follow. At this point I managed to deathcoil the warrior, fear the druid and take about 40% of his HP off (lucky fear) before he came out of it, insta healed himself, popped a rejuv on the warrior and went back to the nearest pillar. Any ideas on how to beat this combo?
Shammy + warr we found equally difficult, for different reasons. Grounding totems, warrior interrupts, pally earthshocking my priest and the warrior pumping out some crazy damage didn't help anything. This seems slightly more winnable, but it seems like a tough matchup nevertheless. Any tips here too?
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: Forgot to add, I spec 23/38 for arena.
You don't always have to go kill the healer first in 2v2. Against druid/war, you should probably drain-tank the warrior and force the druid to come out and heal. Your priest can dispell any HOT's. Dispelling lifebloom is ok as long as you get a rejuv off as well, you're wasting a lot of that druid's mana that way. If the druid learns and only puts on lifebloom, well that really shouldn't be enough healing to keep the warrior up. Once the druid gets behind on damage, thats when you can start controlling him. Force the druid to cast regrowth and use that opportunity to mana brn/fear him.
IMO warrior shaman is a tough matchup against SL/SL warlock+priest because of the high damage output they can do against you. The only advice I have is to make sure you have a totem killing macro ( /target totem, /petattack sort of thing) and use it liberally. Make sure your priest dispels.
Of course, if the warrior gets lucky with stun procs, its GG, but nobody says 2v2 is balanced =P.
I have been seeing some Shaman mods that tell you what has been purged and interupted with earth shock. I was wondering if anyone knew of anything similar that I could use to see what the felhunter devours and what gets spell locked?
08/01/07, 5:05 AM
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