WoD PvP Warlock Discussion

[Kirroth]

Demonic Servitude pets have less HP than the Wrathguard with Glyph of Demon Training.

Right, but while I'm probably going Demo PvE, I'm not sure I like the feel of it in PvP. I'm also a filthy casual when it comes to PvP that isn't playing anywhere near 2200+ rating, so my opponents aren't always as expertly on the ball about coordinated pet killing.

I can see the appeal of SB:H for putting pressure on an enemy team in rated PvP. But half my consideration is for more random mucking around in Ashran, where unexpected 1v1 encounters are a thing that's going to happen. Under those circumstances I keep coming back to a powerful pet with a root being an attractive choice.

[Lucidious]

Anyone check to see if goserv doomguard hits decent as demo when compared to say a second felguard or glyphed imp? Cause with imp swarm's damage being so low I was wondering if we had any other real pet burst CD options that actually work lol.

[xskarma]

I made a slight change to the thread name, removing the "Beta" from the title. Discussion here has been good and I don't want to throw you out of a this thread when there's not a PvP sticky to move you guys to yet. So, carry on.

[Santoisms]

I made a slight change to the thread name, removing the "Beta" from the title. Discussion here has been good and I don't want to throw you out of a this thread when there's not a PvP sticky to move you guys to yet. So, carry on.

Xskarma was going on a locking spree and you all survived the purge.

[xskarma]

Xskarma was going on a locking spree and you all survived the purge.

For now...

Nicola was hoping to find time to do a new PvP sticky, so untill that either gets done, or gets definitely canceled I thought it was best to keep this thread open. It's hard enough as it is to foster good PvP discussion on the Warlock forum without having to start new threads all the time and disrupting it further.

[Tyrean]

So I know that level 90 stuff is not any indicator of level 100 performance, but I wanted to share with you guys that I have had the most FUN playing affliction in battlegrounds lately. I started out with the patch playing demo to see how it would fare and I liked the tools I could use but the felguard was actually kinda hard to keep alive and there was just not enough survivability. Then I switched back to destruction and it was fun totally blowing people up, but the second any melee at all looked at me I would fall over with nothing I could do.

Then I played some games as affliction. I had to change my mindset a little bit to play it correctly, but using the drain life talent and glyph I can essentially face tank one melee and hold my own against classes like mages and hunters from range. I ended up going with improved pets so I could have more health on my observer so I could sac more health for a bigger shield and it is nice to be able to do damage and stay alive.

The damage when you get haunt and dots rolling can take someone by surprise, the timing of the haunt travel time landing lines up pretty well with drain soul starting to tick and it is quite nice burst. You also have the option if you need to take down a healer of just spamming haunts into someone and it does very good damage when it crits.

I have been able to face tank ferals, rogues, hunters, mages, other warlocks, and shadow priests. Warriors are a bit hard as are DKs that know what is going on...

I just wanted to share for those who are spamming BGs while waiting for the expansion as there is not much else to do. Try affliction out. You will do tons of damage and live long enough to have fun in the process. Probably have been affliction for a week now and I am feeling pretty good about it.

[Deleted]

Has anyone tried Affli with Soul Link and Grimoire of Sacrifice on the Beta? Someone correct me if I'm wrong but from the videos I've seen Locks seem to have about 410k HP in PVP gear. Add 20% from SL/Gsac combo coupled with the Drain talent and Glyph would be some pretty serious regeneration. Even a couple of ticks would heal for quite much, combining it with Siphon Life glyph and Eternal Resovle for some passive mitigation. And Haunt also has a huge SP coefficient, increasing that by 20% could give Affli some actual burst capability with direct damage. Fire off a few huge Haunts to increase the DoT damage plus the direct burst.

I havent played the Beta at all but something like this could be (atleast in theory) quite powerful atleast in a 2v2 setting. 3v3 is of course a different animal. Good luck getting even those few ticks of Drain Life with a DK and Warrior pummeling your face in.

[Tyrean]

I tried out that combo at 90, and the extra health was just not as big of a deal as the potential loss of damage. The only thing that is really percentage health based anymore is drain life and you do have to play a little harder to use it correctly. I mean, sac was nice before mainly because of regen and healthstones and the bigger boost to healing you would get from that. Which is why I would sometimes sac a voidwalker for the health boost if I knew I was going to get trained.

The only reason I could see taking sac as affliction is if you can't babysit your pet well enough (they die super fast now for some reason) and you can't hardcast rezz it all the time. Also I would imagine at level 100 we will spend most of our shards on soulburn haunt as I think it will be the best pressure in 3v3 games and for sure in RBG games.

Finally, I am starting to think that sacrificial pact is the way to go instead of soul link. Playing as destruction it makes sense to use soul link and sac pet, but as affliction I think it makes more sense to run with sacrificial pact and a pet.

Oh and about the drain life usage, I have found that if you channel until you get one tick and then cancel that a lot of melee will wiff the interrupt. The other thing you can do is start to cast a fear in their face at high health and let them interrupt it, which will give you free reign to cast in their face. I have taken many melee down just face tanking them by either fake casting fear to bait a kick and then drain life to full or just plain letting them interrupt me and waiting on the silence to tick over.

I have 92,953 health at 90 right now in my pvp gear and drain life with talent and glyph heals me for these amounts:
1st Tick 5251 - 5.6%
2nd 5777 - 6.2%
3rd 6302 - 6.8%
4th 6827 - 7.3%
5th 7352 - 7.9%
last 7877 - 8.5%

Total healing 42% of your health. It is pretty absurd and you can spam the hell out of it. I can for sure get two ticks out of a blood fear or a howl of terror if a melee is sitting on me, and if I can get some distance with port I can normally get a full duration drain off.

[Phoenexis]

Sacrificial Pact is scaling insanely well since Beta. It outpaces Soul Link by so much. When I first tried the Beta out I went for Soul Link, then tried Sac Pact. I have to say that vs every caster the buff would expire before they'd break it. Melees were able to destroy it, but it's still significantly better than Soul Link.

[Kirroth]

That's an encouraging report, Tyrean. Thank you for it. I was already considering going Afflic PvP and now I'll definitely give it a try. What you're describing sounds like Wrath era tactics, so it's not entirely surprising for it to make a comeback under the right circumstances.

[Phoenexis]

That's an encouraging report, Tyrean. Thank you for it. I was already considering going Afflic PvP and now I'll definitely give it a try. What you're describing sounds like Wrath era tactics, so it's not entirely surprising for it to make a comeback under the right circumstances.

Eh... The gameplay sounds kinda boring, there's so much facetanking even in 1v1 situations... I really hope Blizzard changes their minds about our main reaction to damage is standing still and spamming Drain Life...

[Ghiroza]

I have been running the same drain life build as well. I just feel with melee being sat on us 24/7 that affli is now even stronger for us as you can just dot, haunt and run. Trying to generate gaps were you can with portal and cc to get drain life off. Destro is just so bad now unless you are completely ignored and left to free cast, and that is never going to happen.

[Werst]

Aff really really feels like it needs drain/harvest life off the shadow school or at least interrupt protected. Its a nice option when you can cast but its so easy to park melee on locks and you never get to cast with never DR'ing interrupts plus the stuns. Too many uptime tools that let them pve rotation us while we need a teammate and 3x cooldowns to get must more than a UA cast off. That said for demo its easier to start a DL on a pillar humper and at least get some DF out of it vs trying to build DF via shadowbolt. Then easy to meta, ToC, (if you aren't planning a kill or swap in the next 10 seconds), and go back to caster for whatever. Keeps up the imps until you are ready for a push.