Season 13 discussion & Warlock PvP Guide.

[Hugginz]

If we're talking arenas here, It's all up to the comp you're facing. UW comes with such a hefty health cost that most warlocks would hesitate using it against certain teams, such as melee or hunter cleaves, who can after using UW switch to you and put you to the ground. UW is also nearly useless when being tunneled, also 'cause of the health cost. I find UW to be really good (if you warn your healer that you're using it) against caster teams that polymorphs or fears you.
.

We're talking about Unbound Will here, right?? UW?

What health cost are you talking about?
There is no health cost and the other talents in this tier are next to worthless in Arena.

*edit. I'm an Idiot. there's no 20% in the battenet tooltip.

[Nerraw]

We're talking about Unbound Will here, right?? UW?

What health cost are you talking about?
There is no health cost and the other talents in this tier are next to worthless in Arena.

UW costs 20% total hp to use.

[Docmort]

The amount of PvP Power and Resilience on gems have been reduced by 50%.

...so I guess this is the other shoe dropping for gemming pure resilience? A little frustrated with this as I won't be as resilient as I was expecting. Considering this nerf is gemming int and the spec-favored secondary stat the way to go or should we scrounge half the usual resilience from 5.3 gems?

[ComputerNerd]

In the macros you can replace "target=" with "@".
Might help if they would otherwise butt against the 255 character limit.

[Phoenexis]

In the macros you can replace "target=" with "@".
Might help if they would otherwise butt against the 255 character limit.

Yeah I did the change for all macros that had lots of characters in them. Couldn't be arsed to change those that didn't need it though.

[xskarma]

From PTR patch notes May 7th: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/913...7_2013#warlock

• Blood Horror no longer activates from attacks made by pets.

This should help out a bit at least. Shame they didn't have this working when Blood Horror was first implemented.

[Nicola]

Would be nice if they made it proc on hunter shots though... Blood horror right now is still kinda helpful when 1v1 against a hunter because half of the damage comes from the pet :/

[Deleted]

I read somewhere people are using PvE heads to use the Meta gem for PvP, anyone here tried it?

[Nicola]

Nope. I suppose it can work although I'm fairly sure the actual PvP meta gem is far better. Nonetheless, with the ilvl ceiling in 5.3, you'll be unable to use the PvE gems in battlegrounds and arena.

[Apom]

Hello guys!

Recently I am a bit troubled by my arena damage output as a destruction lock. I have never been a high rated player - no, but when I played my DK or Mage my damage used to be on par with the enemy dps, but nowadays I find myself doing only 50-70% of the damage the enemy does. I am playing 2v2 only for caps with my resto druid partner.

I have no similar problems in pve so I am rather unsure about the source of this failure. I keep immolate up at all times, conflagging when possible, casting incinerates usually and waiting for my burning embers to cap and ,try, to release my fury with the dark soul+chaos bolt combos. Oh and I am using Shivarra for the extra CC, rotating my fear with the cyclone of my druid partner. Melees eat my face (especially warriors, ferals and rgoues are so damn annoying) but I dont pull higher numbers in comparison when we face a caster team either.
Tbh on this rating level I am not interrupted more often than my enemies are.

Whats wrong, maybe my reforges, is it me or is it the class?

[jupiteran]

quick gemming question is it worth using the pvp power/mastery gems or just stick to raw pvp power for affliction.

[Novx]

Hello guys!

Recently I am a bit troubled by my arena damage output as a destruction lock. I have never been a high rated player - no, but when I played my DK or Mage my damage used to be on par with the enemy dps, but nowadays I find myself doing only 50-70% of the damage the enemy does. I am playing 2v2 only for caps with my resto druid partner.

I have no similar problems in pve so I am rather unsure about the source of this failure. I keep immolate up at all times, conflagging when possible, casting incinerates usually and waiting for my burning embers to cap and ,try, to release my fury with the dark soul+chaos bolt combos. Oh and I am using Shivarra for the extra CC, rotating my fear with the cyclone of my druid partner. Melees eat my face (especially warriors, ferals and rgoues are so damn annoying) but I dont pull higher numbers in comparison when we face a caster team either.
Tbh on this rating level I am not interrupted more often than my enemies are.

Whats wrong, maybe my reforges, is it me or is it the class?

Don't just wait till you are ember capped to cast chaos bolts. It only takes 2-3 to actually land a kill assuming you correctly use your Conflags (Stacking Conflag/Chaos bolt landing for massive burst). You want to use Chaos bolts to bait cooldowns and make it so that when you have your CDs up they have nothing that they can do (example: Don't pop Dark Soul on a DK that has AMS and AMZ up still, get their healer feared and make them waste AMS and after that it is a free kill)

Pet: Don't use Shivarra, This pet shares a DR with Fear, there is no reason to use this over the Observer/Felhunter Sac. If you druid plays correctly you can easily keep 1 of their players out of the fight almost the entire game.

Melee on you: Feral/Rogue are extremely annoying just due to the amount of ways they can stop your damage, Warriors shouldn't be that bad as they are extremely easy to burst if you can fake-cast their kick after getting them to waste their Spell Reflect.

Gear: You are in PvE gear on the armory currently so I can really assess that part of your play at the moment but if you want to PM me later I can take a look at your gear and see if you are gemming/enchanting/etc correctly. (Reforging should be Hit Cap>Mastery>Crit>Haste)|| My warlocks gems/enchants/etc: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ovxjr/advanced (Should be in PVP Gear)

Talents: Not entirely sure if you are in PVP talents (since you are in PVE) gear, but don't use Mannoroths Fury unless you are in RBGs and generally I use Howl of Terror or Shadowfury (Howl for double melee, primarily rogue/monk/ret teams) and Shadowfury for Warriors/DKs because it will allow you to get a chaos bolt off without them triggering a reflect or an AMS.

[Apom]

Thank you very much Novx.
You can see me in pvp gear/talents on armory now. For pvp I am using KJC and Shadowfury.
Tonight I am going to try the observer and stacking two conflagged chaos bolts for faster burst.
However, I think I still have to learn baiting cooldowns with fake chaos bolts.

[Ryft]

How are Destro Locks vs Hunters? Im tired of dying to them on my Fire Mage.

Between Sac Pact, Shadowfury, Undending, you shold be able to at least get some casted spells off right?

Edit: Also, Which pet skill to use whan you have GoSac? Ive been using the Knockback one which is a bit hit and miss sometimes(whiplash), but Im tempted to try the Spell lock.

[Deleted]

Spell lock is probs best gosac, whiplash for when u want fun in pvp and knock off cliffs, I alwaysswitch between these two.

[Hugginz]

How are Destro Locks vs Hunters? Im tired of dying to them on my Fire Mage.

Between Sac Pact, Shadowfury, Undending, you shold be able to at least get some casted spells off right?

Edit: Also, Which pet skill to use whan you have GoSac? Ive been using the Knockback one which is a bit hit and miss sometimes(whiplash), but Im tempted to try the Spell lock.

For hunters, I would try the GoSup Voidlord. The 8 second disarm is pretty good. Also a well placed Howl of Terror on the stampeded pets, combined with the disarm will make the hunter burst pretty low... for a bit. Make sure to try and Fear, or CC in some form, the pet (if possible). A BM hunter's pet can kill you by itself. (wtf... gotta gear my hunter). If you're a mage, it's easier, you can root the non-Bestial Wrathed pet and just get away from it, or if it's beastial wrathed you can blink.

What we found worked with hunters (at least from 1500-1750 mmr in 2s, I play destro/subtelty 2s) is that you have to get on them quick and early and force them to use their deterrence ASAP. Then you need to stay on them after they come out of deterrence to get the 2nd deterrence. They can't be effective dmg dealers when they're deterred. Once you've burned through 2 deterrences the hunters effectively dead (assuming he's on a 2x DPS comp) and you've lived through whatever burst has been put on you. If it's BM/Healer comp... then I'd still focus the BM until you've burned through the 2x deters and the Readiness. Hunters DPS will go down significantly after readiness and the 2nd set of CDs are down. Most likely though, you're dead. Hunters are really strong right now.

A really good hunter though will gobble you up. Just too much CC and control. 4 trinkets, 2 silences, a myriad of stuns, scatter trap, etc. A really good hunter is just going to gobble you.

[WarlockJack]

Hello,

I know Affliction is gimpy in pvp, but its my thing; so don't OMG GO DESTRO at me. ;-)

The pvp guide at the the top of the page states that I should value Mastery over Haste... but some people are telling me the opposite.

Should I aim for more haste, more mastery or balance them? Currently I have around a 60/40 split between balancing Haste/Mastery.

I'd like to say Mastery because my dots don't hit hard without MG... but Mastery doesn't boost my demon's dps at all.

Does anyone have some definite answers to set me on the straight track?

Thank you!

[icecoldsir]

Def mastery, with amount of haste your PvP gear has on it you will not have enough to hit the major breakpoints to make it even remotely worthwhile. Also since afflictions main boon in arena is multidotting targets it makes mastery a much better stat.

[Ryft]

For hunters, I would try the GoSup Voidlord. The 8 second disarm is pretty good. Also a well placed Howl of Terror on the stampeded pets, combined with the disarm will make the hunter burst pretty low... for a bit. Make sure to try and Fear, or CC in some form, the pet (if possible). A BM hunter's pet can kill you by itself. (wtf... gotta gear my hunter). If you're a mage, it's easier, you can root the non-Bestial Wrathed pet and just get away from it, or if it's beastial wrathed you can blink.

What we found worked with hunters (at least from 1500-1750 mmr in 2s, I play destro/subtelty 2s) is that you have to get on them quick and early and force them to use their deterrence ASAP. Then you need to stay on them after they come out of deterrence to get the 2nd deterrence. They can't be effective dmg dealers when they're deterred. Once you've burned through 2 deterrences the hunters effectively dead (assuming he's on a 2x DPS comp) and you've lived through whatever burst has been put on you. If it's BM/Healer comp... then I'd still focus the BM until you've burned through the 2x deters and the Readiness. Hunters DPS will go down significantly after readiness and the 2nd set of CDs are down. Most likely though, you're dead. Hunters are really strong right now.

A really good hunter though will gobble you up. Just too much CC and control. 4 trinkets, 2 silences, a myriad of stuns, scatter trap, etc. A really good hunter is just going to gobble you.

Thanks for the reply...the Voidlord tip sounds good, might use it when I get Silencening shotted, see how he likes it lol. Im using Shadowfury right now so I dont think I would have access to Howl of Terror. I was thinking Sac pact for the stampede (if it comes early enough).

Thanks again.

[Bogdan]

Mastery by far. For Affliction even gemming mastery instead of PvP Power or Intellect is better (tested it on the current PTR), dots are doing more dmg with full mastery gems than other combos, while MG, Haunt and Fel Flame a bit less, but I wouldn't suggest it, since for Destro and Demo it lowers your damage for every single spell if you gem that way, so just reforge everything to mastery.

In my current PvP gear I have 62% mastery as Affliction (non-human warlocks have more mastery than human ones because on-use/proc trinket gives PvP Power, while PvP Insigna gives mastery) and 5% haste. Haste is of very little importance in PvP, even if you reforge for it, you'll get like 10-11% at most while reducing your mastery by at least 10-13% points. I personally even prefer crit over haste after mastery.