Warlock Legion PvP thread.

[Kirroth]

I've started catching up with the PvP Q&A from this morning, the video not the bullet point summary, and there's a really interesting bit at the start. Holinka says that there's been so much flux with classes and talents and artifact that they're really only just starting on the PvP specific tuning now, and that we should see a lot of progress on that front over the next month. He also mentions damage for a lot of classes being way too high and is in the process of being toned down.

So no need to panic over any PvP imbalances just yet. The current state of the Beta is far from the final goal, and the PTR is almost completely worthless.

- - - Updated - - -

Some other Warlock relevant highlights:

In a discussion of why they're using fixed secondary stat packages with no player customization, it was explained that this lets them keep control of stats with high burst potential. If a spec has a Mastery with a burst type effect they'll just give that spec a minimal amount of Mastery and provide more of other stats. The specific example called out was, to no surprise, Destro. So that's sort of a solution to the worry that Destro would live or die by Mastery rolls in PvP. It won't because it won't have enough Mastery to matter if it rolls high or low.

Discussing melee with lots of mobility or CC options Holinka said this was a good example of where they'll use the PvP stat and spell adjustments to balance things. They don't want to ruin class fantasy by removing those tools, so they're going to straight up nerf their damage to account for the much higher uptime those melee will have on casters compared to easier to kite classes.

[Duckz0rs]

There's a major issue with soul leech being purgeable/ spellstealable , this is our core tankiness and a lot of classes seem to be able to remove it entirely, hek mages can steal our tankiness :c

Hope they fix this soon tbh.

Did you report this as a bug? At least, I really, really hope this is not intended. Kind of odd if our main tankiness can be dispelled by most classes at the press of a button.

[Kirroth]

I was trying out PvP on the PTR as Afflic last night and it's improved a lot better already. Damage seemed respectable and I didn't feel made of tissue paper. The last one is a major change from the last two expansions, so that's good.

If you tried PvP when it was hilariously imbalanced and not since, you should give it another stab.

[wholol]

I was trying out PvP on the PTR as Afflic last night and it's improved a lot better already. Damage seemed respectable and I didn't feel made of tissue paper. The last one is a major change from the last two expansions, so that's good.

If you tried PvP when it was hilariously imbalanced and not since, you should give it another stab.

Well, we shouldn't dwell on PTR balance tbh, let's hope they get the recipe right for 110.

[Kirroth]

Well, we shouldn't dwell on PTR balance tbh, let's hope they get the recipe right for 110.

It's true PTR balance isn't the be all and end all, but compared to a week or two ago PvP balance on the PTR is vastly improved, which bodes well for 110 balance as well. And since I don't have Beta access the PTR is all I can test first hand.

[Deleted]

Affliction feels really good on the PTR. The spread damage is insane and they really nailes the tankiness aspect well. It also has sick single target pressure with stacking UA's. Locks ill continue to be a must have in RBG's and strong in 3's. Also really good 1v1, even against most melees. It's so much fun to play.

[Deleted]

Yeah Lock will probably become the king of 1v1. Not sure which class can beat them in Legion.

Casting Circle and the talent that makes drain life refresh the dots and you practically win by pressing two buttons.

Oh what sweet revenge will be had on those filthy cats and death knights.

[Kirroth]

Casting Circle and the talent that makes drain life refresh the dots and you practically win by pressing two buttons.

Which is exactly why those two are on the same talent tier, so you can't do that. The Devs aren't that stupid.

Rogues and DKs will still be a tough fight due to Cloak and AMS. Not a fight you can't win, but you'll probably have to burn some cooldowns for it.

[Nopkplease]

Which is exactly why those two are on the same talent tier, so you can't do that. The Devs aren't that stupid.

Rogues and DKs will still be a tough fight due to Cloak and AMS. Not a fight you can't win, but you'll probably have to burn some cooldowns for it.

They aren't on the same talent tier. He's talking about Rot and Decay, not Essence Drain.

[Kirroth]

They aren't on the same talent tier. He's talking about Rot and Decay, not Essence Drain.

Oh, duh. Sorry, reading comprehension fail.

I'm not sure how auto-win that combo is. You're basically counting on winning the race where Their DPS - Your Self-Healing < Your DPS. No tricks, no kiting, Fox Only Final Destination. Which isn't a bad race to bet on, I agree. But it has potential weaknesses.

The most glaring is that you're not doing full DPS if you're just relying on R&D. With the current design it only renews UA to base damage, and stacking multiple casts is so very important for full DPS. Heck, if you cast three or four UA and then channel a single tick of Drain Life you just negated a lot of your own damage. It also doesn't renew Siphon Life, which I expect most Afflic Warlocks will be taking in PvP. Finally the Circle doesn't work if you're taken out of it by a knockback or Death Grip, nor does it protect against full CC like stuns.

So yes, it's decently strong, but honestly I think I'll go for Essence Drain over it.

[Deleted]

Oh, duh. Sorry, reading comprehension fail.

I'm not sure how auto-win that combo is. You're basically counting on winning the race where Their DPS - Your Self-Healing < Your DPS. No tricks, no kiting, Fox Only Final Destination. Which isn't a bad race to bet on, I agree. But it has potential weaknesses.

The most glaring is that you're not doing full DPS if you're just relying on R&D. With the current design it only renews UA to base damage, and stacking multiple casts is so very important for full DPS. Heck, if you cast three or four UA and then channel a single tick of Drain Life you just negated a lot of your own damage. It also doesn't renew Siphon Life, which I expect most Afflic Warlocks will be taking in PvP. Finally the Circle doesn't work if you're taken out of it by a knockback or Death Grip, nor does it protect against full CC like stuns.

So yes, it's decently strong, but honestly I think I'll go for Essence Drain over it.

Of course you're not just going to count on drain tanking, you still have fear for CC and great snare from Doomguard and his decent damage. Vut on the moments you cant get away bith casting circle and essence drain are going to be very good tools to mitigate and/or negate damage.

[Kirroth]

Of course you're not just going to count on drain tanking, you still have fear for CC and great snare from Doomguard and his decent damage. Vut on the moments you cant get away bith casting circle and essence drain are going to be very good tools to mitigate and/or negate damage.

Hmm. I'd been using GoServ in my PTR testing to have a short DPS cooldown, but you're right that Doomguard has advantages. Better target swapping, a short but powerful snare, and you keep the spell interrupt. Is that worth losing the GoServ cooldown and the normal Doomguard summon cooldown? I'll have to try out how it feels.

[Deleted]

I havent tried Service at all, havent felt like I need a dps cooldown at all to nuke targets down. And losing the Doomguard cooldown yes, but now you have him at your side nuking 24/7. He hits like 10k with hia bolts it's really good damage. And the snare is a life safer. Its 4 sec only but thats enough to pump 3-4 UA's into target by which time its almost over for the target or a fear etc.

[Janke]

Spent few nights on the ptr, trying out all specs, and I must say the most fun I had in bgs is with affliction and GoSac. Currently, I am running 1211332 and spreading my dots all over the bg. Hilarious results.

Demonology feels like the strongest non tank 1v1 spec on the ptr, or possibly weaker only to the assassination. Play style is quite interesting, and with dark pact and demon skin you are invincible. The difference between Demo and destro/aff is that you retain stun from Felguard, another stun (or interrupt) from GoServ and with empowered felguard you have stronger dark pact shield. I kinda still didnt find the best possible "dps rotation" for battlegrounds, and I kinda cant keep up to shadowburn destro and ofc the affliction in dmg. This is due to me not playing optimally, and because people can easily outrun you if you dont have all the cds. Summoning entire legion of demons just to see that monk run away feels bad every time...

Also, wanted to touch on my idea for a destro pvp spec. Now the other day I watched cobrak's video on destro chaos bolt spec, and was kinda sad to the result. Cobrak, the famous destro lock youtube-er, pointed out some real issues, and problems of the spec, but besides that I realized one thing. When he used his firestone, his chaos bolt dmg doubled. Now to me, as a mathematician, thats str8 up a stupid thing, I mean he has some baseline crit % from the 850 ilvl pvp estup in bgs. This means he somewhat reached his crit lvl (which is more than zero)+100%, which is more than 100%. Dumping maths behind me, second thing I realized is that destro can, again mathematically, 2 shot people. I would really like for some1 to try this out. Whats the deal?

Well, you go for firestone, Initiation and curse of fragility. You curse of frag a target, conflagrate (target is over 80% most likely. confla dmg is shit without the artifact proc)>firestone>two chaos bolts. Cobrak's chaos bolts were hitting for 480k with firestone active, and 240k without. Simple maths will tell you the following, with addition of initiation chaos bolt would hit for ~529k while firestone is up. Thats over 1 mil dmg. What next bothers me is haste ratting in bgs, and casting time of chaos bolt (on Ptr with backdraft i have a 1.5 sec cast time on it almost), and adding soul harvest to the equation. With soul harvest, dmg of single chaos bolt goes to ~662k, which means 2 will hit for 1mil and 324k, curse of frag lowered targets hp to 1m and 600k alrdy that means you still have some 4 sec of it and firestone to deal those <300k

I know this is all maths, and theorycrafting, ofc first question is who in their right mind would let you do the whole process while watching, but I would first like to see if my theory is correct. I dont have Beta access, I am kinda tired atm and my spelling is going nuts. 2mrw I would like to discuss the possibility of using succubus as destro, with sacrifice and dark pact along with casting circle as a means of setting up this whole burst. That would be my first idea of how to make somewhat take that full combo... Hope my maths is correct and some1 can try this whole thing I came up with during my preparation for ring and field theory. Thats where I got the idea to use casting ring


EDIT:tried to format it a bit... TL DR Have a neat idea for destro spec, some1 pls try it out on beta. Enjoyed aff the most in bgs, its amazing on the ptr, while demo feels clunky and sluggish to me.

[wholol]

Spent few nights on the ptr, trying out all specs, and I must say the most fun I had in bgs is with affliction and GoSac. Currently, I am running 1211332 and spreading my dots all over the bg. Hilarious results.

Demonology feels like the strongest non tank 1v1 spec on the ptr, or possibly weaker only to the assassination. Play style is quite interesting, and with dark pact and demon skin you are invincible. The difference between Demo and destro/aff is that you retain stun from Felguard, another stun (or interrupt) from GoServ and with empowered felguard you have stronger dark pact shield. I kinda still didnt find the best possible "dps rotation" for battlegrounds, and I kinda cant keep up to shadowburn destro and ofc the affliction in dmg. This is due to me not playing optimally, and because people can easily outrun you if you dont have all the cds. Summoning entire legion of demons just to see that monk run away feels bad every time...

Also, wanted to touch on my idea for a destro pvp spec. Now the other day I watched cobrak's video on destro chaos bolt spec, and was kinda sad to the result. Cobrak, the famous destro lock youtube-er, pointed out some real issues, and problems of the spec, but besides that I realized one thing. When he used his firestone, his chaos bolt dmg doubled. Now to me, as a mathematician, thats str8 up a stupid thing, I mean he has some baseline crit % from the 850 ilvl pvp estup in bgs. This means he somewhat reached his crit lvl (which is more than zero)+100%, which is more than 100%. Dumping maths behind me, second thing I realized is that destro can, again mathematically, 2 shot people. I would really like for some1 to try this out. Whats the deal?

Well, you go for firestone, Initiation and curse of fragility. You curse of frag a target, conflagrate (target is over 80% most likely. confla dmg is shit without the artifact proc)>firestone>two chaos bolts. Cobrak's chaos bolts were hitting for 480k with firestone active, and 240k without. Simple maths will tell you the following, with addition of initiation chaos bolt would hit for ~529k while firestone is up. Thats over 1 mil dmg. What next bothers me is haste ratting in bgs, and casting time of chaos bolt (on Ptr with backdraft i have a 1.5 sec cast time on it almost), and adding soul harvest to the equation. With soul harvest, dmg of single chaos bolt goes to ~662k, which means 2 will hit for 1mil and 324k, curse of frag lowered targets hp to 1m and 600k alrdy that means you still have some 4 sec of it and firestone to deal those <300k

I know this is all maths, and theorycrafting, ofc first question is who in their right mind would let you do the whole process while watching, but I would first like to see if my theory is correct. I dont have Beta access, I am kinda tired atm and my spelling is going nuts. 2mrw I would like to discuss the possibility of using succubus as destro, with sacrifice and dark pact along with casting circle as a means of setting up this whole burst. That would be my first idea of how to make somewhat take that full combo... Hope my maths is correct and some1 can try this whole thing I came up with during my preparation for ring and field theory. Thats where I got the idea to use casting ring


EDIT:tried to format it a bit... TL DR Have a neat idea for destro spec, some1 pls try it out on beta. Enjoyed aff the most in bgs, its amazing on the ptr, while demo feels clunky and sluggish to me.

You lose initiation % increase when you apply curse of fragility since it instantly lowers the targets health to 80%+ any damage taken even pet hit will reduce him below that 80% so you will never have that bonus , besides let's say your 2xCBs dealt 1M combined damage , you are now out of cooldowns and if you started with only 1 shard you should have zero shards and 1 conflag charge left, not to mention we no longer have shadowburn so you have no way of finishing the guy off.

If we consider destro's potential for burst and compare it to other casters burst potential you will find that destro is quite behind some others, most notably mages in general.

Although in my opinion destro will shine vs 2 target cleaving, if you considering doing 1M on 2 targets at once that is quite the pressure in my opinion.

[Kirroth]

Well, I can see the potential in the Doomguard for PvP. That snare is actually pretty handy. Maybe in RBG you can spec GoSac, because you'll have enough teammates to cover the snare and interrupt you lose. But for unrated BGs and arena it might be a good choice.

On an unrelated note, I think Rogues are going to be the big Warlock counter, or at least the Afflic counter. DKs with AMS are bad enough where you can't cast at them, but Cloak even clears the DoTs you already have on them. You have to just stand there and take it for a full 5s while dealing zero damage. Which is rough when all your self-healing depends on dealing damage. It's still a fight you can win, if you're good and go in fresh, but it's probably the hardest 1v1 match up I've found so far.

[Janke]

@Wholo
Well guessing I am 2 old for this game. First, doesnt the hp reduction works like those trinkets? It actually makes ur 80% of hp the new 100% for the duration (it doesnt literally take hp of ur character)? So technically target has 100% hp when you cast CoF (thats how those trinkets with hp increase worked). Did you actually test this, cause as I pointed out, it didnt work that way in my time. (at least the part with hp, while also dunno how initiation would work, since you would be able to cast second bolt while the first one didn;t hit, so it would have that sweet bonus of 30%)

The usage in arena's is quite good as you pointed out, with some1 who has quite good burst and control destro could make some incredible things.

[wholol]

@Wholo
Well guessing I am 2 old for this game. First, doesnt the hp reduction works like those trinkets? It actually makes ur 80% of hp the new 100% for the duration (it doesnt literally take hp of ur character)? So technically target has 100% hp when you cast CoF (thats how those trinkets with hp increase worked). Did you actually test this, cause as I pointed out, it didnt work that way in my time. (at least the part with hp, while also dunno how initiation would work, since you would be able to cast second bolt while the first one didn;t hit, so it would have that sweet bonus of 30%)

The usage in arena's is quite good as you pointed out, with some1 who has quite good burst and control destro could make some incredible things.

I did not test it so I can't be sure, but it would be weird if it worked.

Even if it did though you need to chain the 2nd chaos bolt before the first one hits, and that can only happen if the target is beyond 35 yards for the travel time.

If let's say a melee is sitting on u you won't have time to get the benefit of the damage on the second bolt not to mention you would actually need the target to be above 80% in the first place, so in arena that might not always be the case.

As a side note , I don't think destro has enough tools to provide dangerous single target burst, outside fire stone our CB dmg is laughable, heck demo has a better burst ability provided you can build enough resources.

[sugarfree]

Even with Firestone, Chaos Bolt is still laughable. It still under the mercy of the RNG gods, completely making the spell (and the spec) unreliable in trying to pressure or score a kill. The only saving grace with this spec are the portal, and even those are on long cooldowns.

Affliction has way more burst than Destro at this point; given the same costs, risks but with predictable numbers.

Demonology is a beast but a hard cast spec. It is still a good spec against melee, reminds me of MoP. If you really spec into Pleasure through Pain, Fel Lord and Casting Circle - you have a good fighting chance of owning them.

[Deleted]

Well, I can see the potential in the Doomguard for PvP. That snare is actually pretty handy. Maybe in RBG you can spec GoSac, because you'll have enough teammates to cover the snare and interrupt you lose. But for unrated BGs and arena it might be a good choice.

On an unrelated note, I think Rogues are going to be the big Warlock counter, or at least the Afflic counter. DKs with AMS are bad enough where you can't cast at them, but Cloak even clears the DoTs you already have on them. You have to just stand there and take it for a full 5s while dealing zero damage. Which is rough when all your self-healing depends on dealing damage. It's still a fight you can win, if you're good and go in fresh, but it's probably the hardest 1v1 match up I've found so far.

Yeah Sacrifice could be the way to go in RBG's if you can do without the interrupt. I don't know the system behind it but I think it procs more with more targets dotted. It hita quite hard and is like and extra fourth dot in aoe situations. I dont remember the exact numbers but Corr hits like 3.5k, SL 2.5-3k, Agony 2-4k and Sacrifice dot 6k. It's just regular ptr bg's but I feel like yiu can definitely see a difference in damage with Sacrifice compared to Supremacy. Of course the interrupt could be much more worthy than the extra damage but who knows. I think Affliction will continue to be nearly mandatory in RBG's, especially with Fragility.

Sorry for typos if any, on my phone.