Season 13 discussion & Warlock PvP Guide.

[adezero]

i'm sick of my observer despawning and having to resummon it all the time. it always ends up chasing some running away. I just said fuck it and went sac, i'm afflic btw

and im talking bgs, not arena

[Deleted]

In destruction if you use a pet you use grimoire of supremacy and stats should be: resi > hit cap > crit >

In destruction if you don't use a pet you use grimoire of sacrifice and stats should be resi > hit cap > mastery.

While the sacrifice is supposedly better than pet I don't find it always true. If you are unsure if you will get any heals, I find the pet with sacrificial pact gives way more survivability.

In BG I think destruction is still the best spec because of the massive AOE damage even though it has unfortunately been nerfed in 5.2.

In 3V3 affliction is most probaly the best spec given the sustained damage pressure it can do on 3 players / 3 players plus pets.

In 2V2 I would think destruction is better with burst potential and burst selfheal potential. What do you think?

[adezero]

I haven't tried destro yet in pvp but I can see the rain of fire ember buildup.
I play afflic and it works pretty well. if I can get a drain soul going, target is most likely dead. and UA helps with healers.
maybe destro would be better though. I'm just doing bgs and rbgs. never doing arenas again.

[Deleted]

I recently just got back to WoW and been trying out my Lock for a bit. I've found Destro to be pretty enjoyable for PvE, but for PvP I seem to be getting my ass handed to me by the melees (mainly DKs, Rogues and especially Warriors).

Note that I don't arena, this is just from BGs, and most the time I don't have my demonic gateway/portal set up, so my mobility is limited.

This is my armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...llkrieg/simple

Ignore the ungemmed PvE gear, my PvP gear isn't better though, it's pretty much just unenchanted/gemmed contender and 2 pieces of malevolent.

I know I'm supposed to gem/enchant, etc, but right now I want to build up my skill level and don't care much about my character's power. I want to make sure I have my rotations and glyphs/talents right to work with.

Any suggestions on how to deal with the melees on the lock? What's the best spec?

Destro is very very nice in BGs.

It is normal that you have problems against war / rogues / dks as they have absurd burst and will destroy you even Under sacrificial pact + healthstone + dark regenaration.

Mannoroth's fury is fun but against melee if you don't have Kil'jaeden's cunning you are as good as dead.

The best spec against cleave are probably affli and demono because you can cast a lot instantly (e.g. non interruptible).

That's why destro is harder against melee with all those long cast times that can be used to interrupt or spell reflect.
Key is to be at ideal distance from melee to avoid being charged and being too near. If you are too near you may have serious problems casting even if not interrupted or reflected. One of the best tool is the teleport, it takes a bit of time to learn to use it efficiently.
Also as destro you have to learn to make a cc chain to be able to cast chaos bolt. example: dark blood into chaos bolt into shadowfury into chaos bolt into fear into shadowburn.

Against a rogue who knows how to play it will be very hard. he can teleport even more than us, has absurd burst, has dot (poison) and can shuriken toss you to death from a distance laughing at your dot damages.

Finally don't forget to silence. For example silence a DK before bursting him to prevent him from using antimagic shell.

[Nicola]

In destruction if you use a pet you use grimoire of supremacy and stats should be: resi > hit cap > crit >

In destruction if you don't use a pet you use grimoire of sacrifice and stats should be resi > hit cap > mastery.

While the sacrifice is supposedly better than pet I don't find it always true. If you are unsure if you will get any heals, I find the pet with sacrificial pact gives way more survivability.

Why exactly do you think crit is better than mastery when using supremacy?
Crit remains an unreliable stat while mastery gives a flat damage increase and increased healing. If it wasn't for the fact that crit increased ember generation and slightly increased chaos bolts damage, it would be below haste.

[Deleted]

i'm sick of my observer despawning and having to resummon it all the time. it always ends up chasing some running away. I just said fuck it and went sac, i'm afflic btw

and im talking bgs, not arena

Control it then, pet micro is part of the deal if you play a pet class in pvp. If someones far away enough to despawn your pet, you should have switched it to passive long ago, since they're out of range of you and you're (presumably) attacking someone other than your pet, while being unable to benefit from it's utility (silence, purge etc).

I've had great fun in BGs since 5.2 launched as destro, finally replaced my demo OS after the nerfs and I'm glad of it, destro is proving to be significantly stronger than affliction ever felt.

Played a few days as crit > mastery > haste with observer, simply because I hadn't bothered to read up on stat priorities since the changes - seemed to play well enough.

Recently switched to mastery > crit > haste with sac thanks to a mix of this guide and Cobrak's guides. Still gemming a mix of pvp power and resilience, despite knowing you get more value from resil, I'm not finding survivability an issue in random BGs and my arena partner isn't available lately.

Really enjoying how destro handles now, I'd also consider destro better than affliction v melee, afflictions over reliance on MG hurts it more than any of destros cast times, remember fel flame can be used for ember generation if you're really being locked down.

[Deleted]

Hello guys, can someone suggest me a nice comp for arena in 3v3? i'm planning to play destro

[CJack14dt]

So I read the wonderful sticky about the specs in PvP right now and I learned a lot (I've not played since before MoP). I was kind of curious though about how the play style has evolved for these 3 specs in PvP. As in the pros, cons and counter mechanics of each spec.

To give you an idea of where/when I'm coming from, the last time I played PvP Affliction was the average generic spec for PvP and 90% of everyone rolled it but you were really shut down by warriors and rogues, demo was stun king and very strong in 1v1 but required intensive attention to micro-management and was blown to hell if focused, and destro was the "anti-rogue" and has incredible amounts of control and damage in fights but was overlooked as too hard by Affliction fan boys.

I'm just now playing again (86 atm) and still sorting out the bijillion and one things going on on the screen of my PvE demo lock that weren't there before. I imagine PvP is just as markedly different.

[Simplexity]

Affliction is different now in that it's a much more potent single-target spec than ever before. Multidotting is still useful for decent pressure, but not as beneficial as in prior expansions. Affliction is also very cast reliant due to having to use Haunt and MG often for good damage, but a downside to that is that you'll get locked out more and there really is nothing else to cast when locked out of shadow aside of Fel Flame. Another thing about Affliction is that ironically, it has very little ramp-up time because you start at full resources (shards) at the beginning, where as Destro and Demo have to build up their fury/embers. So you can get damage rolling very quick with Affliction, but on the downside, Affliction damage is mediocre outside of cooldowns. Survivability and utility are the worst as Affliction because outside of glyphed CoEX (which sometimes isn't worth taking), Affliction has minimal escape and peeling mechanisms and those are tied to using Soulshards, which sacrifices damage.

Demonology's biggest strength is that you can get by at almost 100% efficiency without ever casting because pets and instants are a big part of your damage. Also, the spec makes good use of both fire and shadow spells so getting locked out isn't a big threat. This means that if you are expected to get focused, Demonology does very well. Spread pressure for Demonology is also very good with Dooms and Corruptions. Since the Chaos Wave a few months ago, Demonology burst, while still strong, seems to be the weakest of all 3 specs. Demonology generally does better the more targets there are because Demonic Fury is easier to generate with more enemies. While still a good spec for 1v1s because of the utility, it's harder to sustain high damage 1v1 than it is if you were in a group fight. The last thing about Demonology damage is that you tend to feel useless half the time because damage in caster form tickles at best. If you can get past the notion that caster form is really just to build fury and not kill, then you'll be fine. Utility and survivability wise, Demonology takes the cake. The pet stun is a very good peel for both yourself and teammates, and can also be used offensively. This also lets you take Howl or Coil and/or Blood Horror so you have 3 instant CCs, all on different DRs. Demonic Leap is a good getaway tool (last patch you could also port once in caster form and once and Meta), and the knockoff is gamebreaking on Z-axis maps on arena and BGs and on a very short 12 second CD.

I recommend Destruction for anybody starting out. It's very easy to play (like 6 damage abilities) and one of the best BG and RBG specs in the game. For arenas though, Destruction is probably the worst warlock spec for arena because it's much harder to get Chaos Bolts off. Destruction is very versatile and excels at both single-target and multi-target scenarios. Although you can blow someone up with Dark Soul, damage outside of Dark Soul is still pretty decent as Destruction. Destruction also makes use of both shadow and fire spells, so even though it casts a lot like Affliction, it doesn't suffer a big penalty when interrupted. Destruction excels in BG settings really because of Shadowburn. Shadowburn is an execute that is basically a guaranteed kill and gives you embers very quickly. These embers let you do more Chaos Bolts and Ember Taps. While Destruction doesn't offer much of spec-specific utility and peels, Destruction gives Demo a run for its money for survivability because of it's self-healing. Because Destruction doesn't need to Life Tap, if you have extra Embers, you can sustain your health pretty well with Ember Tap. This is a big reason why Shadowburning low health targets and keeping Rain of Fire up in group fights is important.

[Morictan]

Great thread and guide!

Two questions:

1.) What talents would you recommend for Destro if I was just doing BGs and RBGs? (I read the guide, which recommends some, both some of the choices are dependent on other choices, i.e., only take X if you take Y, so I was curious as to what you'd choose if picking all talents, and not just per tier).

2.) If you recommend taking Grim. of Sacrifice, what Pet do I sacrifice? The Felhunter for the spellock? The Succubus for the Whiplash? Or Other?

Thanks!

[PPN]

Hey,

im playing a demo lock and im not sure if i do my stuff right. I usually just put corruption and hand of guldan on my target then i spam fel flame and i try to be annyoing with my fear, shadowfury and pet stun. Well and then i wait to get some demonic fury (like 400) to do some burst.

Well it feels like dot...run around and wait, cc stuff so i dont get interrupted and burst. Still, if i get locked down in demo form my overall dmg is really whack.

What am i doing wrong?

[Deleted]

Use on-use sp trinket with imps, put coruption up (buffed by trinket) do HoG and go into meta before it lands (buffed by trinket and meta), put up doom(s) (buffed by meta and trinket). CC and nuke when you see an opportunity or if in need of survivability.

When you cast demon soul spread dooms, this will crit over 100k's per tick tough it gets dispelled by certain classes like shamans druids etc. Cast Chaos waves only when you need the burst or when you can put insane pressure if all opponents are near eachother. Else use em as HoG's.

Keep corruptions up, keep up the cc, dont just cc blindly but with reason. Dont forget one of your biggest assets in arena, Carrion swarm. Making an opponent los' his teammates can result in way bigger pressure and eventually a kill.

But I suggest you play destro because doom's are dispellable and the burst is nerf'd alot.

[kinglock]

Is that comp still good this Season Lock, Bookin, and Dic priest? I play a lock and don't know if affliction is still the way to go or destro or even maybe demo? Any Thoughts?

Thank You

[Gnawty]

A blog with additional information and explanation for the reasoning behind PvP changes will be available very soon.
All characters now have a base Resilience of 65%.
Resilience has been removed from most PvP gear.

What the actual fuck?

[xskarma]

What the actual fuck?

NO idea. Wait for better explanation then just these notes and not overreact is the best course of action. There'll be a plan of some kind, we just haven't heard it yet.

[pokeadott]

What the actual fuck?

Awesome change. It's to let people without current pvp gear not be absolutely miserable while pvping (anyone with an Alt going up against double upgraded S12 people knows what I mean). All gear scales down to 496, so you can take PvE gear into arenas/BGs without being ultra gimped. Still have to see what (if anything) they do with PvP power, but it's a great change anyway.

Most pvpers want arenas/bgs to come down to skill, not a massive innate power level difference between team A and B. This makes that gap much more manageable. It's an effort to increase PvP participation (arenas specifically), which is cool. Whether it will work or not (not sold that the current meta game is good enough even with a much smaller entry barrier), it's good to see Bliz actually trying to proactively help pvp.

[Nerraw]

I'm cautiously optimistic about those changes at this point, and I'm definitely looking forward to that upcoming blog.

[invader]

quick Q about haunt.. do you have to apply it before whacking your dots on? or does it increase the dmg if u apply it when dots already up? ty

[Nicola]

quick Q about haunt.. do you have to apply it before whacking your dots on? or does it increase the dmg if u apply it when dots already up? ty

You use it when dots are already up, the damage increase happens regardless if you apply haunt first or your dots first.
If you haunt without dots up, a good player can either instantly dispel it due the lack of ua, or cc you making you unable to apply dots. In both cases your haunt is wasted.

[invader]

k cool cheers I have been putting it on after getting the 3 dots up, was just curious ;p im a bit new to locking haha.. cheers