Hello,
I have been playing Warlock PvP every single expansion pack that has been released since the launch of WoW. I understand that the consensus is that Warlocks are in a bad place right now and I thought I'd use this thread for us to give each other pointers on what works and what does not work currently for Warlocks in PvP. My input will mostly be from the side of Affliction as I believe that spec is the one who is in the best shape right now.
What's good
Affliction has an incredible damage potential through Darkglare and Dark soul: Misery. If I get only a few seconds to breathe when the match begins, I find myself doing an immense amount of sustained damage. As that damage is up I can turn towards fearing and locking down other targets while my DoT's and my teammates finish off the team.
What's bad
I will never get time to breathe. Warlocks have the worst long-term survivability in the game and as such we require an immense amount of babysitting by our teammates which effectively locks them down. I have had a very hard time finding teams for PvP this expansion. All of our defensives fall under the shadow school and since every single melee, healer and caster now has interrupts and stuns, we are incredibly easy to lock down. I have been in 3v3's where I have literally been chain silenced and stunned for over a minute. Feinting a cast is a really cool meta-tactic that I love, but it's just not worth it now since everyone has an interrupt or a back-up stun.
What's the reason for this?
The reason for this is that Blizzard made interrupts more important to make PvE more dynamic and fun. Blizzard has stated that they want to move casters towards hard-casting their spells again and to introduce GCD to more abilities. This was something made to set casters apart from melees and/or other classes such as hunters who basically just spam instant casts abilities. The idea is to make spells feel like powerful things you need to focus on casting, and when you do they hurt. The problem is that every single melee now has distance closing abilities, stuns, interrupts and in many cases a silence. The only way to efficiently handle a melee in the game now is by having instant cast roots. Warlocks have no roots and no instanc cast CC's. Even having one melee on me reduces my incredibly predictable (DoT) damage by a metric shitton, and practically completely negates my ability to CC. Portals help extremely little since we have no slowing abilities and every melee has distance closing abilities.
So what works?
Like I said earlier, I have had a very hard time to find people who want to play with me. The wide availability of spell lockdown abilities and distance closing abilities make Warlock defences very weak. Luckily, one of my friends play a Frost mage.
Frost mages are probably the only caster class that is represented in the high ranked arena. The reason for this is what I previously said, roots are the only CC that can stop melees from completely destroying any target they choose to attack. By having my friend completely focus on using polymorph and peeling melees away from me by rooting them with every root CD that he had, I was able to unload a buttload of damage. By simply allowing me to breathe I was able to singlehandedly take almost any target down in the games that we played.
So....?
There you have it. The only thing I've found working in the arena is to have a class completely cover up for my total lack of defensive abilities. To be honest this kind of gameplay feels horribly uninspiring. The free-casting damage and CC of Warlocks is incredibly powerful so nobody should ever ignore a Warlock. Due to our bad defences, we cannot do anything when melee's targets us. It feels like the only way to make Warlocks work in PvP is to completely center the gameplay around our damage potential. A mage has to be completely dedicated to peeling whilst a healer will never change target away from us while we take the beating of a lifetime. Personally I would much prefer to sacrifice a bit of damage for a bit more defense.
Suggestions
Well, I've complained a lot so here are some suggestions.
Make interrupts part of the GCD - It's crazy that it isn't already
Make the silence portion of interrupts have a diminishing effect - would help from the endless lockdown
Make interrupts cost resources - shouldn't an interrupt be something to plan? cost some energy? why not?
Give us a root/slow - stop the melee train!
Please post some more examples of how you have made it in PvP as a Warlock. Also feel free to post suggestions.