Role Of an AFF Lock in Arenas

[Czaan 0]

So Im coming out of the forums "closet" and making my first post. Im on a low pop server and really cant find any other Affliction locks to talk to as a sounding board so I decided to come here since I have gotten so much good information already! (thanks for that BTW)

ANYWAYS my question is.... How should an AFF Lock perform in an arena setting? Just DOT everyone up and CC, or Focus 1 target and go for the kill with CC as well?

My 2's team is Resto Druid/Lock

My 3's team is Resto Druid/Frost Mage/Aff Lock

(BTW I know these are not the best team make ups BUT I do arenas with my RL buddies so we do as best as we can with what what we have.)

Any pointers, tips, suggestions, advice are all welcome. I think I have a good idea of what im doing in PvP but I know I am far from an expert so I would appreciate the information. Also any addons you recommend would be much appreciated!

Thanks again for everything this community on Icy Veins does!

[Zagam 1,982]

For 2s, Warlocks aren't much fun to me. Others may find them fun, but to me, the low burst we have is detrimental to the ability to kill one person on the other team if you're facing DPS/healer teams. Against 2 DPS, you have plenty of CC, peeling ability, and survival utility to survive anything anyone throws at you. Your role would be to wear out the other team by timing CC, CDs, and other things to keep DoTs rolling on the DPS while bursting down the healer while having your Druid cycle Cyclone and stuns on the DPS while assisting in DPS on the healer you're trying to kill. Against double DPS, just survive while rolling DoTs....one of them will die eventually while you have damage rolling on everything.

For 3s, your role is to protect your healer while making the other healer's life an absolute misery. All 3 DoTs can be dispelled at one time by their healer, but that's ok if he likes being silenced. As soon as he dispels them, put them right back up. Use Howl of Terror when being focused as well as all of your instant cast DoTs. Try to gain some separation with Fear to apply UA. Tell your Mage not to pop all his CDs at once and play survival mode for the other teams burst. Their healer will pop some of his CDs and if you can force him to blow his trinket, you'll be lined up to win. Wait until you call it out, then CC 2 people with Fear and Poly then pop DS, full DoTs, Haunt, and Malefic Grasp. Without anyone to interrupt you, MG hurts like mad. Use Haunt as a high damaging ability and once you get a Drain Soul channel off, the first tick will usually execute someone.

Affliction is all about timing and surviving until your moment to rock and roll. Affliction will see brighter days with the Glyph of Unstable Affliction reducing cast time, buffing UA's damage and guaranteeing a critical hit upon dispelling, and our newly innate 10% stamina to go with 10% spell power. I'm not even close to being as proficient at PvP as I am at PvE, but that's what I've taken away from in my time at playing with some friends.

[Czaan 0]

Seems like 2's I had the right idea, and 3's I might have to adjust a bit. Very good info and thanks a bunch!

[Mit213 20]

A few just general tips to add:

Keep UA up on everyone in 3s always so when your mage's frost nova (and frost bomb if he uses it, lately I've used nether tempest and it has been working out great with my boomkin partner so if he uses nether tempest then it doesn't really matter if you cover it with your UA) is dispelled it just applies more pressure. It is probably a good idea in 2s also for if your druid entangles melee often at all. In 3s you really need to make sure someone is feared about 90% of the time, recasting fear right after it goes off and continually fake casting it until it is dispelled (unless your enemies aren't quite up to the skill level of fast dispels or they fear too much for the UA silence) is a really good habit to get into.

The above is just really easy stuff to get into, but stuff you should get in the habit of no matter what anyways. The real thing that I would suggest is getting a few addons, the thing is getting all these at once will be overwhelming so it is up to you to slowly add them in if you can get use out of them, I just know once I started using the last few I downloaded I got about a 100-200 rating increase to put me at rank 40ish in our 2s bracket (just started a 3s team so we haven't made a ton of progress there, also our battle group is rather tiny).

*Diminishing Returns Tracker (to see diminishing returns on your fears).

DBM-Spell Timers (so you can set your partner's defensive cooldowns, offensive cooldowns, and mana cooldowns to show on a DBM countdown so you can always know when they have stuff up).

*GladiatorlosSA along with SpellAlerter so SpellAlerter will tell you who is casting what on who (except for focus target casts), and even if you aren't paying attention to it 100% of the time, you can make GladiatorlosSA scream at you when people pop cooldowns and stuff.

*Gladius is an obvious arena requirement for most people because being able to know when trinkets are down on your enemies is a must, as well as helping you track your CC's a bit better.

*InterruptBar will just help you to dodge interrupts much better and to keep track of when they're on cooldown, although as a warlock if you have Kil'jaeden's Cunning you will probably need a stopcast keybind that you can use to fake cast people because you can't just move to stop your cast.

LoseControl will just let you keep track of which specific CC's are on your teammates and enemies, and after a match you can go and look back and see who broke which CC's how because it spams your chat area quite a bit over the course of an arena match (if you want) telling what ability from who broke which CC.

For the above addons, the ones with * are the most important IMO for you, but if something doesn't work for you don't worry about getting it.

Sorry if that is a lot, and if you weren't even looking for addons at all, but I can't give too much spectacular warlock advice because I have seen next to no warlocks the past month, so this is what I can help with.

Edited January 22, 2013 by Mit213

[Czaan 0]

Hey Ill take any advice and help. I appreciate it all! Thank you!

[Czaan 0]

What curse should a lock use in Arenas? Is it Curse Of Elements 100% of the time or does Curse Of Enfeeblement play a role as well?

[Mit213 20]

Sorry about the late response, but really it will only be used when the healer/mage/druid/whatever isn't dispelling it, or you can apply it a few times when people are nuking/separated from the dispels, but as I said, I don't play a lock and hardly see them so I don't 100% know. I just got farmed 6 games straight by a pair of cataclysmic gladiators in 2s and as they repeatedly showed me how good players own scrubs in arena, I noticed I wasn't even the target to kill and they didn't put enfeeblement on me at all (or my partner).

[Nikalia 1]

What curse should a lock use in Arenas? Is it Curse Of Elements 100% of the time or does Curse Of Enfeeblement play a role as well?

2's:

Melee + Healer

Place enfeeblement on the melee if he is bashing you or your partners face in, as the dmg reduction is significant in PvP.

Place enfeeblement on the healer if it's a holy paladin, or another healer that usually has to cast for their bigger heals (so not really on a resto druid).

Use exhaustion on a ret paladin and kite him while killing the healer.

Caster + Healer

Enfeeblement is nice to place on frost mages due to the slowing of their casts, however Elements is nice if you and your partner are dealing spell dmg.

Double Melee DPS

Exhaust one you are kiting, enfeeble the one tearing your face off.

Double Caster DPS

Elements on the one you are focusing, enfeeblement if it's a frost mage. You can actually even place elements on both (atleast that's what I've been doing in PVE when there's more than one target....from what I've seen it stays).

Melee + Caster DPS

Enfeeble or exhaust the melee depending if he's tearing your face off or needs to be kited. Elements on the caster.

------------------------

That all said, have you considered playing Demo for arena? I've been playing demo + frost mage and the control is very insane -- fights end within a few short minutes if not faster, as we cc lock one guy while popping dmg cd's and bursting the other. You don't DR fears w/ the mage, and insta casting huge dmg while in meta is very nice. Your pet can axe stun and WW to help do huge dmg too.

[fordfiesta 1]

Honestly, unless you are facing a bad team, you can't win at 2's, ever. I've never lost to any affliction lock and never will, it's just not possible for an affliction lock to beat a demo lock, or even a destruction lock in arena.

Arena right now is very bursty, and both demo and destro have good survivability while building up what they need to burst and kill someone, while aff just doesn't have any arena burst at all.

In higher number groups aff is viable, you can put a lot of pressure on the healer while you have team members who have burst who can use less cd's to finish ppl off because you've been wearing them out already and can therefore burst down more healers / focus targets quicker.

But you'll never ever win a duel vs anyone even decent, and that's why in 2's it's just not a very good spec to play.

I highly recommend demo for 2's. I carried several ppl to decent ratings and now I just cap new guildies to help them get cp and even playing with really undergeared (no geared in most cases), and starting off with higher mmr since I've done and won so much arena this season, we still end up winning more than losing. It's not me either, I'm mediocre at best, demo just has really high survivability and then surprising burst. Plus your imps can't be cc'd, so you're always putting pressure on even if you get cc'd.

[fordfiesta 1]

A decent basic strategy for demo on most maps is to get your gateway and then portal down in a triangle asap (definitely have your portal on an easy keybind because you'll have to move it frequently when the healer starts to run and LoS you around the pillars).

If it's against a dk or warrior they will interrupt your gateway since it's almost a 5 second cast and they don't want you to be able to kite like that, so start casting it, but already click your keybind for shadowfury to stun them. You'll have the aoe circle up while still casting the gateway. Stun them and then have your teammate cc their teammate, while you also follow with a fear to their teammate, then both of you hard swap to the dk (or warrior) and then kill them, usually pretty quickly and then you don't have to worry about not having the gateway to kite.

Get corruption up asap, pop imps asap, HoG, the whole name of the game is just to build demonic fury asap. Harvest life if you need to or if hunters pop pet swarm thing, then pop meta, dark soul, trinket, doom and spam touch of chaos. Don't waste any fury on chaos wave in 2's, it uses too much fury and doesn't do the dmg that touch of chaos does. Use your awesome defensive cd's and a healthstone if someone bursts on you before then. Fear again before meta if you need to (make sure you pay attention to when someone trinkets initial cc's). If you're facing someone with a bubble or hunter, or ice block, etc, then fake it with meta putting pressure on but not blowing your load and get them to pop their cd, but save your cd's and a fair amount of fury and switch back to normal, and then meta again after their cd is off.

[fordfiesta 1]

Oh and make sure you have a lot of tomes. You need to switch talents depending on who you are facing and also consider what spec your teammate is. Like if I have a healer and I'm facing a hunter I will take Archimonde's Vengeance, then when the hunter pops everything on me to try and burst me down, 25% of it kills him while I build up a TON of fury from all of his pets, they are trying to figure out what is killing them and then they almost never pop deterence fast enough before the 1 second it takes for me to burst them, or they pop it prematurely just from the Arch Veng and then it's even easier you burst them anyway (corruption builds the same fury during that time despite doing less dmg). If they go after my healer first (hunters usually don't in 2's) then shadowfury their pets and get corruption up on both of them and pet attack before you get cc'd (you will), while your healer kites until the burst dies down, then the hunter has nothing and you have fury and you kill them.

Shadowfury is great against melee, but doesn't work well on mages or druids, so don't spec that against them.

[fordfiesta 1]

Also, enfeeblement got nerfed, don't bother with it. Honestly I don't even CoE either usually unless it's against a healer that will make it a longer match, or a non all at once at the start burst class, like mages, shammies. You're just trying to build up fury (or embers if destro), and then your burst will more than cover it. You need to react quickly at the start usually and one global cd tbh can cost you the match against warrior / hunter / ret pally burst. And most of the time in 2's you're going to face one of those, so don't waste time on CoE unless they have a healer and you do too.

[Czaan 0]

if I were to change specs does that meant I need to get all new pvp gear too?

[Zagam 1,982]

No. The gear is the same, so why would you grind it all over again? Just reforge and regem appropriately.

[Czaan 0]

I just know Affliction so well. Been playing it since BC. Im not looking forward to learning a new spec. :(

[Zagam 1,982]

Considering how much everything has changed this xpac, there's a whole slew of new things to get used to no matter what spec. Youtube is your friend watching people PvP.

[Czaan 0]

So can i get suggestions on gems, talents, and rotation for DEMO in pvp? I think i got it figured out BUT I just wanna make sure. Thanks!