Warlock Legion PvP thread.

[wholol]

Ok guys I believe it's time for another one of these pre-expansion pvp threads ( seems to have become a tradition ).

Let's discuss all warlock specs for legion pvp here, give your thoughts and ideas about what you like or which talent/pvptalent combinations you've thought of as well as anything else pvp related.

I'll start with my own thoughts then:

Affliction flavor is back, I'm glad tbh, although I'm a tad worried about the UA stacking mechanic which might shift us into more of a SP playstyle rather than an old school lock multi dotter.

Demo I've no idea tbh, it seems very appealing to me and looks to be the tankiest spec so far, but almost all of it's spells have a cast time which might pigeon-hole us into having to pick casting circle and turret mode, I'm also sort of worried about the over all survivability of said pets ( if our damage source can be killed so easily it will be a problem , let's not talk about demonhuntards for now :P ).

Destro for the first time since like wotlk is looking legit competitive to me, i mean cast circle just fixed its entire core issue, and the burst on those chaos bolts with talents like fire stone and havoc/curse of fragility for some pretty scary double target nuking and on such a short cd ( 45 sec cd for fire stone ) , I can see things like RLS with a destro as tier 1 comps.

What do you guys think about legion pvp for warlocks so far? no pve discussions here

[Faenskap]

What do you guys think about legion pvp for warlocks so far? no pve discussions here

You'll get people wondering why we are discussing PvP in this thread, that's a tradition too

Wish I had beta so I could try myself. Although then I'd have to play with standard UI which I hate

The problems I see with Demo (and it's an issue on live too) is that you can't control your demons. They attack targets you don't want them to and keep you in combat. I think it was Fatboss' video I watched where he recommended a "all demons attack this target"/"stop attack this target" option, which I like, and support. Another issue is of course the cast times on spells. If you are constantly locked (hah) down, you can't cast, then you gain no soul shards, which equals no fun

Destro PoV:
Concerns:
Losing Burning Embers and the healing
Focus on imp; imp has low HP, we lose felhunter interrupt, the low HP will give low absorbtion on SacPact (unless these things are addressed in Legion)
Low mobility
No more spamming RoF to get stealthies
Mastery can make or break a game

However, we get many nice new PvP talents, and with people claiming melee will be strong, I'd pick talents like Demon Skin, Casting Circle and Curse of Weakness.

Destro I feel is going to be a little different than on Live, but I hope the transistion won't be too bad (for PvE and PvP alike) and that playing destro will be a completely viable option in PvP

[Blk]

Playing with casting circle fixes most of demon's issues with hard casting vs melee, but I think they will have a really big problem with movement and pillars.

Destro should be in a way better spot with casting circle and baseline reduced interrupt duration - those chaos bolts can only be stopped through CC now.

Affliction is really not looking like it can keep up the dot pressure anymore. Really depends on how tuned UA is - right now tunneling 5 UAs into someone is your only choice and it doesn't seem super effective. Drain life making a come back is fun, but we will see how it turns out.

[wholol]

Playing with casting circle fixes most of demon's issues with hard casting vs melee, but I think they will have a really big problem with movement and pillars.

Destro should be in a way better spot with casting circle and baseline reduced interrupt duration - those chaos bolts can only be stopped through CC now.

Affliction is really not looking like it can keep up the dot pressure anymore. Really depends on how tuned UA is - right now tunneling 5 UAs into someone is your only choice and it doesn't seem super effective. Drain life making a come back is fun, but we will see how it turns out.

I'm actually wondering if essence drain can be a thing on affli given it's history with drain tanking etc, I also hope affliction doesn't end up as a garbage spec :/

[Phoenexis]

Getting rid of Ember Tap is good design. It leaves more room for actual gameplay which requires you to juke, CC and kite to mitigate damage instead of mindlessly pressing one button to heal up.

Casting Circle is terrible design in my opinion. I get that they want to make us immobile and what not, but something like Casting Circle will only lead to frustration. Both on the part of the warlock and opposing player. It doesn't take skill to land a 0.5 sec cast and unload all of your spells without being interrupted.

[Speaknoevil]

Anything not demo looks pretty freekill right now,

http://beta.wowdb.com/talent-calculator#C3pm
http://beta.wowdb.com/pvp-talent-calculator#pbm

Lots of instants, good soul shard generation and casting circle.

[wholol]

Anything not demo looks pretty freekill right now,

http://beta.wowdb.com/talent-calculator#C3pm
http://beta.wowdb.com/pvp-talent-calculator#pbm

Lots of instants, good soul shard generation and casting circle.

Free kill hyperbole, locks won't be squishy no matter which spec you play, sure demo might be tankier with no procs or mechanics in play but other specs have their own way of reducing damage, like destro's eternal struggle and destro mastery will make destro not as squishy as people seem to think, and affli is basically forced to drain life as a filler so if u add in all the modifiers etc you can actually drain tank quite well.

[Speaknoevil]

Would you have preferred I said, "suffer from many of the same issues they have now, only exacerbated.. etc?"

Try drain tanking with a Warrior, Demon Hunter and Shaman kicking you(you won't be able to stay in casting circle against good teams because they will just shift positioning) bearing in mind you wont be able to maintain the debuff on both DPS while still putting out good cleave with your DoTs.

[Phoenexis]

Would you have preferred I said, "suffer from many of the same issues they have now, only exacerbated.. etc?"

Try drain tanking with a Warrior, Demon Hunter and Shaman kicking you(you won't be able to stay in casting circle against good teams because they will just shift positioning) bearing in mind you wont be able to maintain the debuff on both DPS while still putting out good cleave with your DoTs.

If they're shifting their positioning then they're no longer hitting you... no?

[Deleted]

If they're shifting their positioning then they're no longer hitting you... no?

They can still stun you, a warrior can fear or dragon roar you out of the circle etc.

[Phoenexis]

They can still stun you, a warrior can fear or dragon roar you out of the circle etc.

Yeah, but you'd be trading a 20 sec CD for a hard-stun/knockback. And keep in mind that nothing prevents you from going back into the circle.

[Deleted]

Yeah, but you'd be trading a 20 sec CD for a hard-stun/knockback. And keep in mind that nothing prevents you from going back into the circle.

Well, it *is* OP as fuck, true. In arena it's on the same level of broken as Rogue's perma-sprint in WSG, i.e. "what the fuck were they even thinking" level.

EDIT:
TBH it should be a longer CD and should root you firmly within that circle. Like, 60s cd, duration 10s, you get immune to all cc, but you become a literal turret, hanging in the air in a coccoon of fel nastiness a'la Gul'dan and the others in WoD when they were powering the portal. Balance cd/length to tune the talent's power. As it is, you can just sit in it permanently.

[Phoenexis]

Well, it *is* OP as fuck, true. In arena it's on the same level of broken as Rogue's perma-sprint in WSG, i.e. "what the fuck were they even thinking" level.

EDIT:
TBH it should be a longer CD and should root you firmly within that circle. Like, 60s cd, duration 10s, you get immune to all cc, but you become a literal turret, hanging in the air in a coccoon of fel nastiness a'la Gul'dan and the others in WoD when they were powering the portal. Balance cd/length to tune the talent's power. As it is, you can just sit in it permanently.

I don't know, I think this kind of gameplay should not be in the game. How about they actually give us kiting tools that would require some form of skill to pull off and feel rewarding?
Also, Soul Link becoming Demonology exclusive is BS. If they want warlocks to be the "tanky" spellcaster then they should give us passive mitigation tools, not BS activated defensive CDs that are just "heal for X, reduce damage by X".

They constantly claim that they want to get back that "class fantasy". Except when "fantasy" was actually a thing, mages were the ones with tons of active mitigation tools and hard CC that countered melee, whereas warlocks had passive mitigation as well as CC.

Up until Cataclysm we only had two proper "defensive CDs", which were Death Coil and Healthstone. The rest was either on very short cooldowns or completely passive.

[Deleted]

I don't know, I think this kind of gameplay should not be in the game. How about they actually give us kiting tools that would require some form of skill to pull off and feel rewarding?
Also, Soul Link becoming Demonology exclusive is BS. If they want warlocks to be the "tanky" spellcaster then they should give us passive mitigation tools, not BS activated defensive CDs that are just "heal for X, reduce damage by X".

They constantly claim that they want to get back that "class fantasy". Except when "fantasy" was actually a thing, mages were the ones with tons of active mitigation tools and hard CC that countered melee, whereas warlocks had passive mitigation as well as CC.

Up until Cataclysm we only had two proper "defensive CDs", which were Death Coil and Healthstone. The rest was either on very short cooldowns or completely passive.

Well, except any class without an on-demand strong defensive CD is completely hosed in PVE. Re: kiting - I'd prefer Curse of Exhaustion back. It was such a good spell, why did they take it away from us ;( It sucks in PVE to not have it, I bet it also sucks in PVP for kiting.

[Phoenexis]

Well, except any class without an on-demand strong defensive CD is completely hosed in PVE. Re: kiting - I'd prefer Curse of Exhaustion back. It was such a good spell, why did they take it away from us ;( It sucks in PVE to not have it, I bet it also sucks in PVP for kiting.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have any kind of defensive CDs. What I'm trying to say is that our kit shouldn't focus around that, because then it causes us to lose interesting spells such as CoEx that aren't completely one-dimensional.

[Vimpe]

Wish they gave us something like this either as a baseline or as a pvp talent
Backlash, Passive
Gives you a X chance when hit by an attack to reduce the cast time of your next Incinerate or Immolate spell by 100%.
This effect lasts 8 sec and will not occur more than once every 8 seconds.

I mean this just seems fair, it goes under the chaotic theme that is destro and its not an extra button to press that blizz seems to be so afraid of

[Nhiosis]

Wish they gave us something like this either as a baseline or as a pvp talent
Backlash, Passive
Gives you a X chance when hit by an attack to reduce the cast time of your next Incinerate or Immolate spell by 100%.
This effect lasts 8 sec and will not occur more than once every 8 seconds.

I mean this just seems fair, it goes under the chaotic theme that is destro and its not an extra button to press that blizz seems to be so afraid of

Yea I agree, I would love to have backlash back.

also demonic breath with a snare.

I'm pretty chapped about GoS losing the demon ability ( so no more spell locking with a sacced felpup)

also, conflag lost its snare. We literally have zero way to kite melee now.

ill roll with the punches, but i was hoping for a redesign of sorts ala shadow priests. maybe in a few more expacs.

[Speaknoevil]

If they're shifting their positioning then they're no longer hitting you... no?

Maybe they've switched to a partner, while abusing los on your circle, or your circle is on the other side of the pillar and they wait for it, or knock you out or stun you in it.

It is a strong ability, but I don't think it is the correct answer to the warlock-melee issue.

Without real escapes to stay at ranged we're just.. casting melee-ranged that has to stay in our circle. *headdesk*

[Blk]

Maybe they've switched to a partner, while abusing los on your circle, or your circle is on the other side of the pillar and they wait for it, or knock you out or stun you in it.

It is a strong ability, but I don't think it is the correct answer to the warlock-melee issue.

Without real escapes to stay at ranged we're just.. casting melee-ranged that has to stay in our circle. *headdesk*

I don't think you understand the full awesomeness that is casting circle. First, it lasts 20 seconds and has a 15 second cooldown, so you can move it around quite frequently. Melee on your face? Put down a circle and laugh as they can't stop your casting unless they use a stun/fear which means it isn't going on your healer. They swap to your partners? Then they aren't interrupting you anyway so you can now fear them off of your partner as they run towards them, or leave your circle and chase them. They switch back to you? Drop a new circle. It is only 15 seconds.

Also, against other ranged classes you can just become a turret that is uninterruptable and just go toe-to-toe. With all the passive DR you should be in a really good spot assuming damage isn't terrible. But if they choose to LOS you, it is the same as if a caster LOS's you now.

[Deleted]

this casting circle talent or w/e it's called seems super op

I mean unless you play against a deathknight you can pretty much do whatever you want now

I expect it to get nerfed