Warlock S12 pvp observation's

[Itisamuh]

I have never been, during my whole gameplay in WoW, so appauled and disgusted by PvP.
I chained 2v2 with a restoration shaman and found the new concept of PvP repulsive. Health going back and up, opponent healers not giving a damn about my burst, opponent DPS doing more burst, ten times faster than I do in terms of preparation and output.
I lost to a Frost Dk/Holy Paladin comp that was backpedaling and playing like morons. Sure I was lagging like hell and couldn't play properly, but I should NEVER, EVER lose to such inexperienced scums that won by barely bashing 4 buttons (literally).
I'm not a random warlock that doesn't know anything about arena, I had dedication and perseverance during every season in Cataclysm, and played great with a gimped spec. But this is just stupid. The whole concept of the spec, and Player vs Player is just plain retarded. This time it's worse, and I'm not going through the same shit again.

This is the honest truth, no exaggerations whatsoever. I tried to give the whole thing a try, but I was extremely disappointed and driven away from the game...

---------- Post added 2012-10-06 at 04:14 PM ----------

I'll stop the game or roll a mage, go figure.

This is pretty much the same feeling of disgust and contempt I eventually got for arena, except for me it happened in Cata instead of now. When healers are too good, I stop enjoying the game. Even BGs are less fun because of it. I think PvP in general has gotten worse each expansion since BC, but especially arena. It was good fun and felt like there was a lot of skill involved in BC, class balance aside. It was fun in a very different way in WotLK, with much less skill involved in my eyes. But with Cata, arena became a joke, and I think healers are the main reason for this. MoP has apparently done nothing to help the situation either, so I will continue to not take arena seriously. The fact that people base all their opinions off of arena, such as thinking affliction warlocks were OP in Cata, when they were an utter joke outside of arena without a pocket healer and pocket DPS with them, just makes it that much worse. Especially since Blizzard said heading into Cata that they were no longer balancing around arena. Nobody seems to want to keep that in mind.

[gez]

no.. pvp was perfect in woltk, every spec got a comp everthing was viable the only broken and imbalance thing was beast cleave outside that everything was nice

came cata fucked everthing, came mop and things got worse i knew about warrios being ridiculous no only their dmgs dear god their control is beyond retarded for real, hybrids hela is out of control too their just another healer in the arena, mages just run around melting everything nonwarrior in their way

and then there we are, the only class with a "fair" sense of balance that is get raped in every match yeah this is getting so gud


for every lock that come and say to me " dude l2p im at 2k" ok bro stop playing with that freaking warrior/bm hunter or fire mage also 2k is so easy to get try to get higher and get slaped in the face

[Phoenexis]

no.. pvp was perfect in woltk, every spec got a comp everthing was viable the only broken and imbalance thing was beast cleave outside that everything was nice

came cata fucked everthing, came mop and things got worse i knew about warrios being ridiculous no only their dmgs dear god their control is beyond retarded for real, hybrids hela is out of control too their just another healer in the arena, mages just run around melting everything nonwarrior in their way

and then there we are, the only class with a "fair" sense of balance that is get raped in every match yeah this is getting so gud


for every lock that come and say to me " dude l2p im at 2k" ok bro stop playing with that freaking warrior/bm hunter or fire mage also 2k is so easy to get try to get higher and get slaped in the face

Although there were tons of viable comps back in WotLK, I personally enjoyed the "concept" of Cataclysm's PvP gameplay more than WotlK's, which was mostly burst. The problem with cataclysm was that there was too much neglect. Lots of specs turned out to be gimped, and many tactics were abused (such as stacking BiS PvE gear, playing insane comps such as Rogue/rogue/X with Fangs of the Father, brain-dead triple DPS comps). Other than that, I found the roles of each spec well defined and if given the potential, they could've achieved viability.

Now with MoP, everybody can heal, everybody can CC, everybody can burst, everybody can do sustained damage, everybody can tank, etc... The gameplay seems to mostly involve mashing your cooldowns by slamming your head into youe keyboard without much thought.
Warlocks in this case seemed to go through half the change. We have questionable roles that can be filled by other classes that bring more to the table, and we don't even have the proper tools to fit into MoP's PvP gameplay. This leads to twice the amount of disgust when playing a warlock.

---------- Post added 2012-10-07 at 04:03 PM ----------

[gez]

lol, im running fire mage, pala destro lock. and i aint gonna lie im getting carried xD and its not that im doing something bad its that i cant do more just bring a decent burst and moment of tankiness then gg. mortalcoil is useless in pvp, shadowfury is ok but with my comp its better howl, and yes lol howl looks like rocking atm.

also havoc is so useless outside ember generation, CB hits for nothing its sad its jsut sad

[Lucidious]

Although there were tons of viable comps back in WotLK, I personally enjoyed the "concept" of Cataclysm's PvP gameplay more than WotlK's, which was mostly burst. The problem with cataclysm was that there was too much neglect. Lots of specs turned out to be gimped, and many tactics were abused (such as stacking BiS PvE gear, playing insane comps such as Rogue/rogue/X with Fangs of the Father, brain-dead triple DPS comps). Other than that, I found the roles of each spec well defined and if given the potential, they could've achieved viability.

Now with MoP, everybody can heal, everybody can CC, everybody can burst, everybody can do sustained damage, everybody can tank, etc... The gameplay seems to mostly involve mashing your cooldowns by slamming your head into youe keyboard without much thought.
Warlocks in this case seemed to go through half the change. We have questionable roles that can be filled by other classes that bring more to the table, and we don't even have the proper tools to fit into MoP's PvP gameplay. This leads to twice the amount of disgust when playing a warlock.

---------- Post added 2012-10-07 at 04:03 PM ----------

Thanks for the chart Phoenexis, your input is always helpful. Any chance you can post a chart on current team comps over 2k? I'm trying to see how many warlocks are succesful and what comps they are using for peels,heals, and such. I'm not gonna lie i'm struggling to stay alive this season and it's mostly due to the reason's that I posted on the first post of this thread.

[wholol]

I don't need to provide calculations. You're talking about gemming a defensive stat vs offensive stat. Nobody gems defensive stats as a dps in high-end arena.

---------- Post added 2012-10-07 at 11:24 AM ----------

Alternatively there are pvp power/mastery and pvp power/crit gems.

well I am surely seeing a lot of R1's / multi glads on AJ talking about gem settings etc,I'm not saying you're wrong, maybe your gem setting is better dmg increase for destro only, but I believe in general for affli using int / pvp power on red/ blue and pvp power/ resi on yellows as stated by many many others is what most high rated locks are going for atm, I linked the AJ thread discussion above if you're interested in reading / commenting on it.

[pokeadott]

Destro needs more frequent/repeatable burst. CB is only good when you have pooled 3 embers, pop trinket, pop dark soul, AND pop UE. If you somehow get an enemy team to waste all of their CC and get a healer stuck in los, the on-demand burst is great. The problem is the stars don't allign frequently enough. Compare our windows to a Frost/Fire/BM hunters/elles/shadows (the other burst ranged specs) - it's pathetic. Feel free to nerf CB damage if it means I can actually create a kill window at least once per minute (1/2min40sec atm - absurd).

Aff needs better multidotting pressure or a complete revamp of how it deals damage. Hitting like a wet noodle unless you can successfully throw out a Haunt AND cast a full MG on a target means the dmg just isn't there. Considering the amount of re-work it would take and the pve implications, I can't see Aff ever doing enough damage this xpak. Our target pvp spec (we get one accordingly to bliz) is a poor imitation of a spriest atm.

Survivbility is bad when trained - which is always. We need always on damage reduction or a short-CD defensive. Play a match vs. a mage/BM hunter/etc and GL surviving the second BM/Shatter/etc. Nerf a long-term CD and make it a short-term one.

Pets are too squishy. They need higher HP. They simply aren't worth using in any game longer than 2 minutes.

Defensive peels/CC needs a lot of help. I play with a shamie and I don't have enough defensive peels. We have 1 DR for CC (Fear) and access to a 3sec AE stun. That just isn't enough. A mage can rong/nova/deep, a shamie can hex/root/tstorm, etc. Not to mention the insane offheals the classes with better peels than us bring to the table. We can't help our healers enough to keep them alive. This applies to us too, but at least we have portal - our peels are garbage.

Berserker Rage needs Fear breaking gone. It's been a long time since Fear was amazing. Warriors already CC casters for 50% of the time while tearing their faces off - Warlocks can't do anything to keep a Warrior off. It's a flat hard counter ability that is OP and a relic. Imagine the QQ if Zerker broke/immuned roots or stuns? Needs to change.

[Deleted]

I actually like Destro damage as it is. I think it may be nerfed for being too much damage in one cast, but the thing with Chaos Bolt verus BM Hunter (one did 1million damage to me with cooldowns, and that was through UR, gg) Frost Mage, Warrior etc, is their burst comes over 5-10 seconds. the fact we can take off 50% of an HP bar in one cast is what makes Chaos Bolt strong. fear healer then UR/Chaos Bolt a DPS once their defensives have been used then it's gg win. I'm playing Shadowplay and setting up kills with Chaos Bolt is (imho, and you may disagree) better than the other burst classes because it's a single cast. it's the closest thing to a shatter last season from a Mage in heroic PvE gear. it's not the burst that makes it good, but the small window of burst. a healer can react to Avatar+Reck, but there's nothing they can do about 140k crit followed by 100k shadowburn when the setup is right.

[gez]

I actually like Destro damage as it is. I think it may be nerfed for being too much damage in one cast, but the thing with Chaos Bolt verus BM Hunter (one did 1million damage to me with cooldowns, and that was through UR, gg) Frost Mage, Warrior etc, is their burst comes over 5-10 seconds. the fact we can take off 50% of an HP bar in one cast is what makes Chaos Bolt strong. fear healer then UR/Chaos Bolt a DPS once their defensives have been used then it's gg win. I'm playing Shadowplay and setting up kills with Chaos Bolt is (imho, and you may disagree) better than the other burst classes because it's a single cast. it's the closest thing to a shatter last season from a Mage in heroic PvE gear. it's not the burst that makes it good, but the small window of burst. a healer can react to Avatar+Reck, but there's nothing they can do about 140k crit followed by 100k shadowburn when the setup is right.

wut? CB same as shatteR? ah? wut? i wish we all do lol

1. you cant hit those 140k outside DS+trinket thats reaaaaaaally bad cuse if you get tunneled by decent melees you wont pull some sorf of decent dmgs to take away their defensive cds, so when you pop DS and start landing CBS they will use defensive and GG need to wait 2 mins to have burst again

2. wut? you think ppl cant do nothing against CB? in first place they shouldnt allow you to cast it (something that is easy to do) and if you are running with a shadow priest you will be the main focus target so theres 2 conclucion i can get from your team:

a) you are getting focused/locked and your team (cuse SP are a bit out of hand) are carrying you harder same as my team

b) youre playing with downy kids who wants to kill the god mode unkilleable SP and let you chain 3 CB in a row

if any one in this planet allow you to chain 3 CBS in a row they deserve to lose and also disband the arena team and maybe quit the game

[anabolicz]

Nerf lock's

[wholol]

I don't get all the talk about CB 1 shotting people tbh, I'm fully pvp geared and I have a hc weap, tried destro yest to see what all the people are talking about, ofc I was reforged into mastery/ crit and my pvp power is 28% with 17k SP with DI up, I duel tested my warrior friend, who is also full pvp geared with a hc weap, he's not gemmed resi or anything like that to increase dmgreduction, he wasn't in defensive stance , he was using battle stance just to see how much cb would hit for.

on use trinket + dark soul = 130k , I don't see the hype, is there some trick to deal 200k + ? coz really it's impossible , all the people whining about destro dealing INSANE dmg just don't have gear.

[zorkuus]

I feel Affliction damage is too dependant on haunt and malefic grasp. I would propose that both effects get cut down by say 50% and the base damage of dots is increased.

[gez]

I don't get all the talk about CB 1 shotting people tbh, I'm fully pvp geared and I have a hc weap, tried destro yest to see what all the people are talking about, ofc I was reforged into mastery/ crit and my pvp power is 28% with 17k SP with DI up, I duel tested my warrior friend, who is also full pvp geared with a hc weap, he's not gemmed resi or anything like that to increase dmgreduction, he wasn't in defensive stance , he was using battle stance just to see how much cb would hit for.

on use trinket + dark soul = 130k , I don't see the hype, is there some trick to deal 200k + ? coz really it's impossible , all the people whining about destro dealing INSANE dmg just don't have gear.

this is what i was trying to say, CB dmgs is not out of the normal stuff and it should be, its really hard to get it out 2 cbs out should hit around 200k with darsoul+trinket


a decent solution is to increse our sustained burst, like making incinarate and confla hit 15% harder and leave CB alone

[Deleted]

wut? CB same as shatteR? ah? wut? i wish we all do lol

1. you cant hit those 140k outside DS+trinket thats reaaaaaaally bad cuse if you get tunneled by decent melees you wont pull some sorf of decent dmgs to take away their defensive cds, so when you pop DS and start landing CBS they will use defensive and GG need to wait 2 mins to have burst again

2. wut? you think ppl cant do nothing against CB? in first place they shouldnt allow you to cast it (something that is easy to do) and if you are running with a shadow priest you will be the main focus target so theres 2 conclucion i can get from your team:

a) you are getting focused/locked and your team (cuse SP are a bit out of hand) are carrying you harder same as my team

b) youre playing with downy kids who wants to kill the god mode unkilleable SP and let you chain 3 CB in a row

if any one in this planet allow you to chain 3 CBS in a row they deserve to lose and also disband the arena team and maybe quit the game

don't get me wrong, I don't think Destro or 'locks in general are in a good spot, I'm just trying to see the upside.

the fact is, Chaos Bolt is 120k during Dark Soul on a target with no defensive cooldowns. the longer the game goes on, the better chance our team has of a kill. in games at the moment I am getting trained relentlessly, I am basically there to provide one big Chaos Bolt with Dark Soul and Unending Resolve every couple of minutes. Chaos Bolt is two seconds under backdraft, there is no team that will stop you getting off a two second cast for an entire game. if you line it up with a CC chain on the healer and an exposed DPS, you and your SPriest can kill something. I've only played up to 2k so far (gg new account and no MMR reset) and coming out with a good win/loss.

check out Maldiva's stream on twitch.tv if you want to see a high rated Lock playing Destro successfully in MoP. it's not all bad.

[wholol]

speaking of viability, I'm currently running demo and it works : |

tried some affliction first though ofc, the amount of pressure I can put out with affliction is miles ahead of demo, but tbh after seeing all of the teams currently I must run demo or I'll get trained all game by any half decent team , if I get trained I'll be dropping fast and my pressure will drop because I cannot really give any time to channel MG , so I'm going in as demo, I have DA glyph but most of the games I'm not even in DA form! arena starts I go in with DA poped, enemy team doesn't even look at me they just for my warrior ( playing WLD atm ), so I just go out of DA and keep fury for meta, it works really, most of the time the enemy team doesn't sit long on me if they decide to go for me while I'm in DA , it's really worth it imo.

If I need to peel or someone in my grp is cornered I can go in DA, pop enfeeblement aura ( its freaking awesome to reduce pressure) and if need be , a proper carrion swarm knock back can save lives tbh, then back to caster and If they swap back to me i just go back to DA, tbh even if warrior AND BM hunter are sitting on me I feel much more comfortable and can actually throw some pressure in DA surprisingly, at least i can pressure more in DA while trained than Affliction can(while trained only ofc), it's funny but I suggest to the people who haven't played it in 3s to try it

the only problem with this spec is, it's multi target pressure is non existent atm, and the amount of time it takes to build fury and spend it is incredibly painful, takes a while to build,most of the time I'm not even going above 500 and it drains so fast while in meta.

[scmpoe]

The thing with chaos bolt is that is scales AMAZINGLY with crit, mastery, and spellpower.

I gear myself for crit/mastery atm because I feel haste doesnt do much for destro at this gear level.

A regular chaos bolt with no CDs/procs only hits for like 60-80k on a fully geared player.

However when I line up demon soul + on use at the same time as my proc trinket and possibly even lightweave enchant (which I try to do as much as possible), I get those ridiculous 180k+ chaos bolts.

[gez]

speaking of viability, I'm currently running demo and it works : |

tried some affliction first though ofc, the amount of pressure I can put out with affliction is miles ahead of demo, but tbh after seeing all of the teams currently I must run demo or I'll get trained all game by any half decent team , if I get trained I'll be dropping fast and my pressure will drop because I cannot really give any time to channel MG , so I'm going in as demo, I have DA glyph but most of the games I'm not even in DA form! arena starts I go in with DA poped, enemy team doesn't even look at me they just for my warrior ( playing WLD atm ), so I just go out of DA and keep fury for meta, it works really, most of the time the enemy team doesn't sit long on me if they decide to go for me while I'm in DA , it's really worth it imo.

If I need to peel or someone in my grp is cornered I can go in DA, pop enfeeblement aura ( its freaking awesome to reduce pressure) and if need be , a proper carrion swarm knock back can save lives tbh, then back to caster and If they swap back to me i just go back to DA, tbh even if warrior AND BM hunter are sitting on me I feel much more comfortable and can actually throw some pressure in DA surprisingly, at least i can pressure more in DA while trained than Affliction can(while trained only ofc), it's funny but I suggest to the people who haven't played it in 3s to try it

the only problem with this spec is, it's multi target pressure is non existent atm, and the amount of time it takes to build fury and spend it is incredibly painful, takes a while to build,most of the time I'm not even going above 500 and it drains so fast while in meta.

if you wanna find out if something actually works, skip playing with a warrior if you just pair with an op class you are getting carried by it and everything works, to my eyes you are getting carried by the warrior as im getting carried by my fire mage and the other guy is getting carried by his SP

play with another team that isnt op if you wanna have a better view about our position in pvp

[Deleted]

I do find it amusing how some warlocks here are using words such as "Ridiculous 180k crit!!" like that's actually something...

Have a BM Hunter pop Bestial Wrath, Stampede and you'll see what "Ridiculous damage!!" really is.

I had a combat log for a BM hunter hitting me 5x with his pets for 37k ontop of a 68k kill command through unending resolve using full pvp gear.

I know some people will call bullshit to this, but I am more than willing to go and grab a screenshot by testing it in a duel setting.

The problem with what I just said, is that during their cooldown, they can't really be killed, during stampede, spirit mend heals them for more damage than any warlock could ever hope to dish out, their pets AUTO ATTACKS (Read: Claw) all hit at the exact same time effectively making those 37k x 5 into 185k in one GCD of which isn't even on the GCD, so when the hunter uses Kill Command and crits me for an extra 68k that's 253k damage in one GCD that cannot be prevented in any way, shape, fashion or form (aside getting a BoP) for which you cannot even fight back at the hunter because he is being healed to full health by his pets which are munching on your face.

The last straw is that the pets use claw every few seconds and Kill Command isn't exactly an unavailable move, it's the main hitter for a BM hunter.

Not only that, you can't even fear/stun/cc the pets that are eating on you, you just have to "take it like a man" for which translates into: Die in 3 seconds flat, while using all pvp gear AND while you're using your cooldown.

Btw GG if you use Dark Bargain, Dark Bargain lasts for a shorter duration than Bestial Wrath so even if you do survive while using it, you'll be left with a dot that's probably going to be hitting you for 500k over 12seconds and the pets will still be there to eat on your face while your cooldown falls off.

[wholol]

if you wanna find out if something actually works, skip playing with a warrior if you just pair with an op class you are getting carried by it and everything works, to my eyes you are getting carried by the warrior as im getting carried by my fire mage and the other guy is getting carried by his SP

play with another team that isnt op if you wanna have a better view about our position in pvp

well yeah I get what you're saying, but if most of the teams I'm facing have a warrior it sort of even's out if you get my point

also met some destro / frost comps, seems to me the lock isn't really an issue at all, ofc we don't let him have a lot of up time, we just sit on him a bit his dmg is like zero without being able to cast CB, meanwhile ofc we control the mage as good as possible, though I noticed that going for the mage and just CCing the lock is much more viable.

also I've found that a few seconds of meta uptime can be more bursty than a CB / conflag combo which is imo simply better since demo also has unparred survivability and mobility atm, though I feel like once the season goes a few months ahead most locks will be going back to affli.

[Lucidious]

I think the sad part is that affliction still has the best tools for pvp of all 3 specs and it seems like it even lost alot. Spread damage isnt bad but it isnt good either and no self healing makes me feel like im the class getting "worn down" half the time. I really wish that siphon life glyph gave us like 2% of our max health every tick instead of 20% of immolates damage. Plus even affliction is missing CC and the lack of cc and self healing is hurting all 3 specs imo