Hey all,
This is my first post, but I've been through the mmo warlock forums for some time. It seems like there are many knowledgeable warlocks who post here, so I was hoping some of you guys/girls can help me out. I've been playing affliction warlock since the end of BC and mainly focus on pvp. Since Cataclysm came out, I've been playing both affliction and demonology specs and had a great time pvping. To improve my game, I've been dueling different classes outside Org so I can get a better feel of what to do in situations where you have to think fast. I was dueling this frost mage who kicked my ass every time and I can't seem to beat him, even as affliction. He was kind enough to share his experience with me and told me that a good lock should never lose to a frost mage. There is definitely something wrong with my game and I was hoping someone could help point it out.
This is how the duel usually goes:
When the duel starts, my intuition is to put up the two insta dots, corruption and boa, and proceed with putting on tongues. I'll fake cast UA / Fear just to get him to CS me, which I succeed most of the time. But by the time I do this, he'll ring of frost where I placed my felpup and can free cast for a good 8 seconds. Although his CS is on CD, once I start casting UA --> Haunt he'll deep freeze me and start bursting. At this point, do I trinket his deep freeze or eat the burst? Or should I teleport away from him until my felpup is free to Spell Lock? If I don't trinket his deep freeze he'll burst me like crazy. When I do trinket his deep freeze he'll use his pet's frost nova to keep my in place and blink away, preventing me from fearing him. Since I'm snared and can't reach him, i'll dot up his elemental and soul swap it. Once he gets back in range, i'll get the soul swap on him and start casting haunt. Before it gets off he'll make mirror images and cancel my cast. By the time this happens his CS is off CD and so is his deep freeze. I fake case fear, get him to CS. After the CS, I'll get haunt up and he's finally fully dotted. However, this whole time he's shooting ice lance and getting my health down to 40-50%. Since I know his CS is on CD i'll fear him, but in the middle of casting fear I'm stunned for a short period of time (I'm not sure what mage ability allows them to stun me) and as soon as I'm done being stunned and start casting fear again he deep freezes me and bursts me down. Even if I get my felpup in range to cs him and get a fear off with full dots running on him he can trinket the fear --> iceblock, wotf the fear --> iceblock, or just straight up iceblock if he's taking too much damage. Most of the time I'm snared and can't get in range of howl. When I start casting drain life, he already bursted me so hard that I can't survive at that point (even after using my health stone).
I know fear is an important cc, but I'm not exactly sure the exact right times to use it. Do I use it so I can get dots up on him? Or should it be used more after he's fully dotted? Should I be keeping CoT on him the whole time, even though he can remove curse while I'm in deep freeze and cast at normal speed?
I've beaten frost mages before, but not really good ones. Granted he had an arena rating of 2500+ for 3s and was in full vicious, but I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to do a little better than I've been doing. I've dueled him both as affliction and as demo and do better with the latter (but I know I'll never beat him in that spec). I would greatly appreciate your feedback on this matter. Thanks!
If anyone is interested my character name is: necrorobin US-Azgalor