Affliction PVP

[Elegua 0]

First of all I'd like to say Icy Veins, several regular posters, and Zagam in particular have some outstanding advice and have helped me out a lot in fine-tuning my PVE skills.

I'm starting to finally get my feet wet in PVP and am having a hard time discovering what is going to work best.

Any PVP afflocks out there care to sound off on PVP tips? I'm wondering what rotations and macros work best for you.

[Zagam 1,982]

Hi Elegua,

Glad to hear that we've been able to help you from a PvE perspective! While I am nowhere close to being as versed in PvP as I am in PvE, I have explored each spec in PvP and can tell you with a great deal of confidence that Affliction is pretty crappy at the moment.

Right now, Affliction's strength comes from channeling MG or DS with DoTs on a target. It's really hard to take down melee because as soon as they see your purpley beam of doom, aka Malefic Grasp, they charge/interrupt/stun and from there, it's hard to get any consistent damage. In arena, being focused will spell your doom. You can spread instant cast DoTs and use Fear to get Unstable Affliction up on all of your targets, but your DoTs don't hit for much until MG is applied. This may change in 5.1 when you can freely cast with no penalty except a minor speed reduction (30%), but as of now, Affliction is pretty tame compared to Destruction and Demonology.

If you insist on playing Affliction, what I've found works best is to abuse the crap out of your Teleport. Use it after a Warrior's charge, after a rogue Shadowsteps (if he's bad and didn't stun you), or my favorite...after a DK has gripped you. Use Fear to DoT up your target. Affliction has Nightmare built in meaning when they come out of a Fear effect, they will be running much slower back to you. Use Fel Flame to refresh UA rather than casting it again, and once you get some separation, then you can start using Malefic Grasp. In arena, you just want to put as much pressure on the healer as you can. You can do this by putting DoTs up on everyone. The healer, his teammates, pets, everything. DoT things like it's going out of fashion. Use your survival CDs when pressured such as Dark Regeneration with a glyphed Healthstone. Unending Resolve prevents interrupts and Silences.

...and soon, Patch 5.1 gives you 70% mobility with no casting penalty while using Kil'jaeden's Cunning. This is...incredible. They're also fixing that wonderful bug where you can't fear a Warrior who popped Recklessness off of you. Those damn Warriors will have their day...DAMN THEM!