To play a Warlock or not?

[gherkin]

A Warlock, in the hands of a truly skilled player, is among the top classes in the game.

Unfortunately, it requires the hands of a decent or better player in order to be considered "Average". A warlock is far from an easy class to pvp as and do well.

[Odyseas]

A Warlock, in the hands of a truly skilled player, is among the top classes in the game.

Unfortunately, it requires the hands of a decent or better player in order to be considered "Average". A warlock is far from an easy class to pvp as and do well.

Exactly. I would say, its best to play the class you enjoy the most. I know it sounds cliche but its just true. I play warlock the past 5.5 years not because warlock has always been one of the strongest classes in the game but because i love the class.

[Reverrend]

Well , thanks for the helpfull posts you made guys


Yesterday i tried affliction on pvp, I dont think i ever had that much fun on wow before.

Having fun is much better than rewards most of the times

Anyway, 830 resilience , 26k hp , 3k sp is still low for arena?

[ComputerNerd]

It is a good start.
Try some skirmishes to judge your survivibility and output to get an idea if you need to up either more.
Will give you some experience too before a win actually matters.

[gherkin]

Get the addon Afflicted3: Know your opponents cooldowns. React accordingly.

[Arc-lance]

I am posting as a deathknight speaking of BG experience only. I roll with 900 resilience with wrathful/relentless pieces and two piece T10. I play a variety of specs, blood;blood with ghoul;frost DW;unholy arena, but they are all generally the same with some having more burst and some having more control and some having more survivability.

I have no problems killing destruction locks in bgs solo, most of them aoe stun into a fear, but a nice lichborne followed with a AMS and I am in their face and they only have teleport to get away. I can almost always kill them and still have enough life left to engage another player. Sometimes you will get a good lock that uses teleport and DC and fears very well, but that is rare.

Now affliction is another story. They are healing for so much of my damage I am doing to them they just sit there and face tank me. I can interrupt a drain life channel but siphon life and haunt keep them pretty well topped off. They can keep themselves alive long enough to eat through my trinket and lichborn and then I am a sitting duck to fears. The times when I manage to get good interrupts off on bad locks or catch them unaware I mostly can kill them, but die myself shortly afterwards seeing that haunt heal ball go launching off to whatever GY they are rezzing from.

Warlocks are actually a class that requires skill to play, unlike Ret paladins, or DKs, or mut rogues. lol. I actually think if I were playing I would choose affliction because of the ability to self heal a lot, and how many times have you been dotted with corruption and agony while riding past a lock to find yourself at your destination with 40% life? I mean that is stupid. Much like the OP shadow priests right now.

It is like my frost mage, it was no fun at all while I was gearing up because I had pitiful spellpower and once someone got in my face I was toast. Now, that I have a decent set of BG welfares and wrathful offpieces I can take on multiple people at once simply because of the mix of control and burst. Warlocks are the same way, they suck bad until you get decent gear and you learn to use your skills effectively, and then they become a little OP.

My advice would be to roll destruction while you gear up and stick in groups. Fear/banish that tree bitch and lay down some conflags and shadowfury in a group and you will be doing your job even though you are not top on KB or damage meters. Once you gear up you should have enough experience to be able to do some pretty crazy stuff.


An example. I had like a 5 minute fight with a warlock in Strand on one of the guns. He was on defense and as such could use the teleporter pads. It went basically like this, I would close to melee and get a couple of hits off to heal myself up from all the dot damage I was taking and he would either teleport or lock teleport to the top and just ran a circuit around. We would do damage to each other and then heal up. It was like ring around the rosy. Was a super fun fight and we both just did the dance until the game ended because neither of us wanted to concede the "duel". It was a good example of a warlock using terrain and skills to his advantage to overcome a class that normally rapes his face.

I had a fight like that against a Horde holy pally back during this years midsummer - originally myself and a warrior friend in her festival gear were just messing with him, charging, fearing etc, Harmless. He megaowned my warrior friend and I'm like "Oh not on pal" so I enagaged him. Fought him for around 6 minutes, draining his mana where I could, and eventually he nitro booted and parachuted into the harbour. I did the same, as most of my toons are engineers for exactly that reason, and we continued the fight beneath the waves where he had fled to try and evade me - He was back at full health/mana at this point so it was square one.

I ended up popping underwater breathing simply for the 15% swim speed bonus and we resumed our fight, which lasted until... Well, the pally forgot to surface for air xD Was really funny to see him try to heal through the water flooding his lungs.