do u think PvP drink tanking comming back in cata. ?

[vkei]

DL crit.
MS nerf to 20%
increased arrmor of clothes
limited mana for healers
bigger heath pool vs damage ratio
--all seems favour to drink tanking warlock style--

it seems to me that , we will have the chance to outlast healers with drink mana again , also last longer toe to toe to melees ,maybe long enough to kill them , all the changes buy us much much more time to do our job which we lacks so much in wotlk

[gherkin]

We should not be able to maintain siphon life with drain life spam and outlast a warrior or rogue. I hope to god this kind of play doesn't come back. This is why
warlocks are accused of faceroll pvp - drain life and fear spam.

[Ghostcrawler]

DL crit.
MS nerf to 20%
increased arrmor of clothes
limited mana for healers
bigger heath pool vs damage ratio
--all seems favour to drink tanking warlock style--

it seems to me that , we will have the chance to outlast healers with drink mana again , also last longer toe to toe to melees ,maybe long enough to kill them , all the changes buy us much much more time to do our job which we lacks so much in wotlk

I'm sorry to say this but, we have tried this and it just didn't work out. I hope we can get it back in a later patch. But not at the start of cataclysm.

[Screwtape]

I'm sorry to say this but, we have tried this and it just didn't work out. I hope we can get it back in a later patch. But not at the start of cataclysm.

Seems legit.

[Deezlar]

I'm sorry to say this but, we have tried this and it just didn't work out. I hope we can get it back in a later patch. But not at the start of cataclysm.

Should be banned on principle...

I hope there is a solid middle ground, where Affli offers good survivability so that we can actually stay alive to maybe refresh our dots once or twice. Fights being longer = good for afflock!

However I think there needs to be a better mechanic for gaining distance on a melee so that Destro is truly viable outside of nuking 0 resi noobs in BG's. Demonic portal was a great start, but all melee classes have an immediate counter to it to gain the distance back either immediately (DG, Charge, SS etc ) or reactive/passively (HoF, Vanish/sprint)

[Ravemstr]

I'm thinking the defacto arena style in cata will be to oom the healer and then kill the easiest target. We can do it now and with the healing changes in Cata we will do it easier then(Life Tap ftw).
As Affliction dot everyone(that heals you remember?) put mild but constant damage on everyone so the healer has to heal and when he's oom just finish someone off... That's what blizz said it will be like, longer matches - no burst, easy mode
As Destro... i'm thinking "Seduce-nuke" will make a comeback... we'll have to see how it works out.
Looking forward to Demo pvp actually Molten Core + Meta + Soul Burn-Soulfire = 15-20k Soulfire crits after resilience ???

[vkei]

gaining distance for cast is the mage style , they won't give us , but keep adding for mages one after one (FN+blink is not enough , another auto FN + stun + ranged FN ,slow is much of a lock spell which given to mages,wall of fog soon...) seeing how they design the mages , i can sure they won't give lock distance gaining abilities and force us to play differently from mages

locks are means to take the damage and having the leech to keep ourselves up , it used to work but completely killed with the 50% MS effect

with the informations we see now , cata. will once again favour the leech style of warlock play , i am not meaning that we should able to leech to keep 100% and kill anything , but at least we have the time to leech and for our DoTs to run , making our HP drop slower than our enemy is how aff-lock works, that's what we should be but can't actually be done now

[Deezlar]

especially seeing as our key affli talent is neutralised into nothingness by people dispelling it regardless... They should make the penalty a LOT higher for dispelling UA, or make it undispellable, and locks our dots on, like the DK's got with their recent Unholy buff.

[vkei]

DK's DoTs are a bit different, they are not there for damage but for thier other abilities to

i do agree that dispelling UA should get a higher penalty , together with a change that they take the damage but UA will stay , so u have near 0 benfit to even try to dispell a UAed target

i can see DoTs will do much better in cata. just wonder how we stay alive , by self-healing (drink tank style) , brusting down enemy b4 we dead (glass cannon style ) , or being the sitting duck (the case now)

[Remmis]

especially seeing as our key affli talent is neutralised into nothingness by people dispelling it regardless... They should make the penalty a LOT higher for dispelling UA, or make it undispellable, and locks our dots on, like the DK's got with their recent Unholy buff.

i do agree that dispelling UA should get a higher penalty , together with a change that they take the damage but UA will stay , so u have near 0 benfit to even try to dispell a UAed target

Dispelling it regardless? A healer dispelling UA by accident (or on purpose I guess if they're retarded) can turn an entire match around. How could the penalty get any higher? Are you guys forgetting it silences?

[vkei]

i also agree that dispelling UA by accident can turn the match , but the term by accident really means that in a very very bad time and with very very bad luck and soooooo much RNG happened together to have it work

normally when they sit out of LOS with shield on , dispelling aff-lock's DOTs won't kill or even hurt thier actual HP , and u won't be able to kill or even hurt him in the 5sec since how great the mobility locks have , and thinking how much damage an aff-lock pull of in 5sec with at least UA is not on the target maybe corr or haunt is dispelled together , yeah recasting UA to the very 1st tick take u 4 sec

silences are great when u use it to stop the healing on a 20% target , but doing nothing if your enemy controling the time of your silences , ppl. don't normally dispell UA not because dispelling UA kills them , but DoT damage is too easy to heal , so they don't even need to choose

the UA is a good idea , just too passtive , and the damage is not enough forceing a dispell , everyone just forget the dispell button and heal the DOT easily

i see cata changes will affect DOTs and healing for the most part , so as a DOT + self healing class , we will face a big changes , just hope it change to a better side

[harky]

We should not be able to maintain siphon life with drain life spam and outlast a warrior or rogue. I hope to god this kind of play doesn't come back. This is why
warlocks are accused of faceroll pvp - drain life and fear spam.

I really don't agree with this. Warriors and Rogues never had a problem downing a Lock that was drain tanking. It was when they were drain tanking and had heals and the Warrior/Rogue sucked that it became a 'problem'. By 'problem' I mean it was perfectly fine. SL/SL should absolutely make a comeback in Cata. The whole point was that you brought a lot of CC and defense, so you could force people to attack an easier target, then control the fight. It allows Warlocks to be a very strategic class. That's something lacking in Wrath... a lot. Watch some high end arena matches and note the strategy against any Warlock team now: Kill the Warlock really fast. Then watch them in TBC: Focus the Warlock to prevent CC, then try and get the advantage by CCing healers, clever interrupts, etc. Matches were much longer and made a lot of sense. You stacked PVE armor gear and lots of stam/resil and played the CC/control/tank game. You couldn't kill anyone fast, but they couldn't kill you fast either. One of the best PVP designs in WoW over the last 5 years. Same goes for Rogues in TBC. Shadowstep Hemo was amazingly fun and brought a lot to the game that's missing now in the world of 'lets burst everyone down in 10 second matches'. Lame.

Blizz needs to stop letting whiners control PVP. SL/SL was fine in TBC. Warlocks were not dominant, they were competitive. Rogues and Warriors could absolutely destroy them, but they had an advantage against other casters. They also had a ton of problems with healers in general. SL/SL was popular because it was the only Lock setup that could live long enough to do much of anything against the other DPS in TBC. If we're going back in the TBC direction on balance (which is good) then SL/SL style play really should make a comeback. It was a very fun play-style and gave Locks a unique role in PVP. Mages had their snares and slows and shields and lots of slippery escapes and we had our self healing. I loved running Lock/Druid/Hunter and playing a combination of CC chains, drains and molding a true defensive team. You can't do that anymore. Bring back 8 minute+ matches. They were amazingly fun.

[gherkin]

I don't miss SL/SL. I didn't enjoy being pigeonholed into a single spec with 3 extra points to spend in 3% damage or 3% damage reduction. I didn't enjoy relying on magical dot effects with no dispel protection other than UB and DI.

I don't mind that Warlocks require insane resilience levels in order to be competitive. I don't mind that we are among one of the most complicated classes to play in PVP.

I'm glad you enjoyed 8 minute matches, but for me that was like ripping off a band aid in slow motion. However, I do like the idea of a warlock being "suppressive fire" in PVP.

And I disagree in the strategy difference between BC and WOTLK. It has always been "Try to kill the warlock as fast as possible. Not working? Keep trying, but do some other stuff while we wait." If anything has changed, its healing and how it interacts with a warlock. When heals and dps and health pools were on par with each other, BC had some minor strategic components. Since they're not anymore it feels different, but in essence its exactly the same, just faster.

[harky]

Not really. I mean sure, you can boil any combat in WoW to 'kill X as fast as possible', but it's just over-simplifying. You had to lock down the Warlock because if you didn't they'd crush your team with crowd control and wreak havoc on your healer by draining all their mana to nothing. I really preferred the chess matches in BC to the FPS death matches in Wrath, the PVP scene is much, much different now.

Now, I'm not suggesting that there should only be one tree and one playstyle available to PVP... but uhm... That's what we have no anyway? Destro has been nerfed too many times to be competitive. You just go 54/17 and that's it. You might go with a Destro subspec for 5s, but I if you care about 5s you probably don't care about PVP too much.

As far as Dispel protection? At 85 you'd be able to go all the way down to Pandemic and still be able to go deep enough Demo for defensive talents. It was a 'problem' at 70... well no, it really wasn't. Part of our play-style was knowing we could trade mana with healers and screw them over because they were very willing to dispel.

[gherkin]

I disagree about the tree - In BC we had one way to play (dot spam & drain mana) that was successful. Everything else died to fast. Now Destruction is somewhatcompetitive, but only due to the FPS death matches. But the key for me is that you aren't forced into one talent spec with a few points to throw around. Glyphs give you more options. You aren't reliant on switching to a voidwalker in order to survive melee. There is the ability to configure your primary tree above and beyond the core setup should your playstyle vary from the norm. It just feels more freeing than 70 ever did.

And I get the dispel mechanic change - that is a welcome decision on my part. Dispel my shit and/or face the consequences. I like it.

[harky]

I don't have a problem with full on Afflic and full on Destro being viable for PVP. Even full on Demo. The problem to me is that anything creative gets knocked down. It was a problem in BC with a lot of classes that you either had one, or no PVP spec. The only class with two towards the end of BC was Rogues, but even then Hemo was much, much better overall. It's like our UA/CB builds now. Yeah, you can get a decent rating as Destro (or Mut then), but it will be much harder. I actually quit my Warlock when I realized they'd turned us into glass cannons in PVP. I only came back to it later on and purely for PVE. PVP just isn't fun in Wrath for non-melee.

As far as 'not relying on your voidwalker'... eh... that's just because even with it you explode like you're made of glass. Warlocks had 3 main advantages in BC: First our PVP gear had enhanced armor. Second DPS was much lower all around. Third was that we had 3 instant DoTs. When SL was merged with Corruption it really made the future of having SL/SL back a no-go until you can also get UA. Add in just how bloody much heals and DPS put out and yeah, even if we had SL/SL now, you'd die. It just wouldn't work. I still have my fingers crossed for the return of hybrid builds in Cata, SL/SL included. Same with Restokin. By far my two favorite PVP specs.