How do affliction warlocks counter being trained in arena?

[abaum4]

Just started to play an affliction warlock and chose to go affliction as destruction bores me.

I'm wondering how to fight against being trained by 2 melee.

If I get the chance against a dk or warrior I can get my gate down and my portal before the fight starts which gives me a window to get away.

If I don't then I always get burst down too easy, even with using blood horror, dark regen, glyphed HS etc.

Can anyone give any tips as to how to counter being trained or any videos to watch that show how to learn affliction without getting raped in the opener?

[mbal23]

I play a feral druid so Im not sure about specifics but usually I see affliction locks taking advantage of their many stuns to quickly get up dots and have their partner peel for them. This should get you through opener and then continuing to LoS and kite while keeping dots up should allow you to do damage. Usually by that time I switch to the partner so you would need to peel for him with a fear or cc. Again not a affliction lock but when the lock plays this way it causes a bit of trouble for me generally.

[Tya]

I play a feral druid so Im not sure about specifics but usually I see affliction locks taking advantage of their many stuns to quickly get up dots and have their partner peel for them. This should get you through opener and then continuing to LoS and kite while keeping dots up should allow you to do damage. Usually by that time I switch to the partner so you would need to peel for him with a fear or cc. Again not a affliction lock but when the lock plays this way it causes a bit of trouble for me generally.

Affliction has one stun, on a long cooldown, and it's a talent that they may not have.

On topic, don't be afraid to use a voidwalker. The 5 sec disarm is nothing to be sniffed at. You can even sac it afterwards and use the 30% health boost, making your Dark Regen and Healthstone 30% stronger for the duration. You're going to lose a bit of damage, but not much. You can soulburn a felhunter out for the silence later (and even sac it for a second silence).

Basically, consider using GoSac and using shards defensively vs cleave teams.

[Deleted]

you dot everything and tank them

[abaum4]

Thanks for the help, so basically i need good peels and then use shards defensively, ive just been going ham on people using soulburn soul swap and haunt spam. Guess the voidwalker is gonna get a few games now

[Deleted]

Juke fears, use SBort if necessary, position wisely, play in portal/gate range, use CoEx wisely, swap pets via soulburn. I cannot really complain a lot, I do just fine this season. Take care of your pet!

[Nopkplease]

I tend to like to jump a lot and spin around in circles until i get shock waved.

[Illana]

if melees decide to train you, you've already won.

[Ajay]

if melees decide to train you, you've already won.

Helpful...

[Shisui-kun]

Warlock is not a viable kill target in LSD

[Blithe]

Their partners. And what everybody else has said: "Warlocks are not a viable kill target in LSD."

[gestapo]

- Always get your gate down. Always. There's no excuse to not have it down at the match start. Your team needs to be ready to intercept the enemy so that you have time to place the gate as it's such a crucial part of you and your team's survivability.

- Use your teleports wisely. Keep a port near a gate, don't get too far out of port range. Change port locations as needed to lose the enemy - e.g. placing ports on top at Blade's Edge and baiting the melee to follow. You need communication from your teammates so that your healer can stay up and heal you.

- Get peels from teammates. You really need to get your team to peel for you. It's a big part of affliction survivability.

- Change your talents based on teams you are facing. E.g. you may want shadowfury vs double melee teams if you don't have someone that has an aoe stun or will DR yours. Blood horror will work nicely against melee as well - and i think it's not on the fear DR (please correct me if I'm wrong on this). Play around with Soul Link + Supremacy or SL + Sac. I've seen people use both and some seem to really like macroing the health bonus from sac + dark regen + healthstone

- Glyphs. You can run the HS glyph, try out the CoEx glyph if it works for you (I personally don't like it), Demonic Circle glyph ( I sometimes use this) and some people like the Eternal Resolve or Unending resolve glyph. You'll have to put some thought into this so you can decide between using UR as is, having it be a 10% perma DR which is always nice, or only 20% DR but on a shorter CD.

- Soulburn. Don't forget to make use of this spell. You can soulburn a teleport for a 50% speed boost and it also makes you immune to snares/roots for 8 sec. That's huge! You can soul burn a drain life for more healing - though that does open you to lockouts and may not be much use unless you run Harvest life (and unless you're messing around in random BG's you don't run this talent).

[Deleted]

Just started to play an affliction warlock and chose to go affliction as destruction bores me.

I'm wondering how to fight against being trained by 2 melee.

wait so you didn't have this problem as destro? lol

ot: since you don't have to cast alot, just play with gate and portal. be smart with fears because you won't get many off. Or ask your team mates to peel for you

[abaum4]

gestapo all your points are spot on, will start to make use of them, was the answer i needed! I'm sure it will come in time as i levelled this warlock to main in WoD so its all going to change on 6.0 anyway :P

and i haven't played destro in pvp apart from to do the green fire quest and don't really have any intention playing destro apart from random bg for lola

[Hallu]

1. Bind scroll wheel buttons to Fear.
2. Scroll like you've never scrolled before.
3. ??
4. Profit.

[Yvaelle]

Personally I run one of either two builds in 3v3 on my Aff lock.

I will either try to maximize damage reduction by taking Soul Link + Supremacy + Glyph of Unending Resolve, at which point I have like -30% passive damage reduction. Or will take Sacrifice + either Soul Link or Sacrificial Pact + Unending Resolve (unglyphed). The first lets me tank damage and reduce comp pressure (particularly effective with an Imp pet to spam dispels on you and your teammates and eat all the dots/debuffs). The second build gives me an enormous health pool and amplifies the effect of all my defensive cooldowns (all of which scale off max health).

Next, you need to learn good positioning relative to your healer and the enemy healer - you want to find spots where you are in line of sight of your healer, but where the enemy would LoS their healer - this puts them at risk (so either they will back off or damage will become more effective on them). You want to use your teleport to kite and escape melee - try to be as annoying as possible - teleport through walls and floors and such - and try to always teleport the max 40 yard range: melee love that.

Next, personally I swear by Kiljaeden's Cunning and Glyphed Curse of Exhaustion - 70% snare for 6 seconds every 10, combined with Malefic Grasp on the move. Combined with 40 yard teleports you can drag enemies far away from your healer when they swap to you, teleport back, then 70% snare them - DKs in particular love this - and you can sometimes force a Shadowstep out of rogues (which they usually want to save for CC or the swap in their next burst cycle).

The other nice thing to mention about KjC and Glyphed CoX is you will pretty much win any 1v1 fight by Soul Burn: Soul Swapping full dots onto a target, going LoS around a pillar, and spamming Malefic Grasp through the wall on them - CoXing them if they catch up - they will get uptime and they will be dangerous still - but pillar + KjC + CoX is such a strong position for an aff lock to be in.

[Illana]

nobody uses kjc, double dark soul is far too powerful to pass up especially as affli barely has to cast.

[quitefrankly]

What yvaelle said seems correct, except the part about KJC. There's never going to be a time when you run around a pillar channeling malefic grasps while kiting a melee. They have a lot of gap closers. Get double dark soul and keep up the offensive pressure.

Don't just randomly port and gate, you have to coordinate stuff with your partners so you don't overlap defensives.

[Stormspellz]

positioning and teammates.

proper utilization of portal/gateway is essential.

[Nicola]

Next, personally I swear by Kiljaeden's Cunning and Glyphed Curse of Exhaustion - 70% snare for 6 seconds every 10, combined with Malefic Grasp on the move. Combined with 40 yard teleports you can drag enemies far away from your healer when they swap to you, teleport back, then 70% snare them - DKs in particular love this - and you can sometimes force a Shadowstep out of rogues (which they usually want to save for CC or the swap in their next burst cycle).

The other nice thing to mention about KjC and Glyphed CoX is you will pretty much win any 1v1 fight by Soul Burn: Soul Swapping full dots onto a target, going LoS around a pillar, and spamming Malefic Grasp through the wall on them - CoXing them if they catch up - they will get uptime and they will be dangerous still - but pillar + KjC + CoX is such a strong position for an aff lock to be in.

Just being curious here but which glyph do you sacrifice for CoEx? I don't think it's worth sacrificing either UA, ER, SL or HS over CoEX for any matchup. :/