Saturday, March 28, 2009

Fear Nerf?

It looks like they're reducing the amount of damage a target that is feared can withstand before fear breaks. I'm curious as to who at blizzard actually thinks this is a good idea, as if our CC abilities were overpowered anyways. Most of my CC abilities get trinketed, and then diminishing returns makes a second cast pointless.

I cant count how many times I've been CCed to death by other classes, even when I use the human racial ability. Reducing the amount of damage a warlock can do on a spell that is already crippled by diminishing returns? I rarely use fear as it is because it has become such a weak spell, and now with the reduced damage intake I'll might remove it from my spell bar.

Nowadays PvP is all about melee combat, because they can do simmilar DPS, but thhey can wear leather or better, and their hitpoints far outnumber the caster classes. Soul link may offset this by a small ammount but only by a 2-3k max, not the 10k above us that plate wearers have. Simmilarly geared melee classes can burn me down alot faster than i can even think about damaging them, I find this quite unbalanced. Good job blizzard!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Compendium of 80 Warlock PvP Gear

For someone new coming into PvP, looking at gear can be frustrating, as there are sets of gear and nobody really has a concise list of PvP gear organized by quality. All of the data on PvP gear is scattered throughout the webosphere. Here is a list of gears in an order that I would reccomend upgrading.

Frostsavage Set
This is a decent set to start off with if you have zero pvp gear as it is tailor made and only requires a minimal investment. I'm going to refrain from linking each item, as it is a long list of items. I'm sure you will have no problem finding everything you need to know about the frostsavage set.

Hateful Gladiator's Dominance Off-Set
First, after the frostsavage, you will want to pick up the hateful gladiator's dominance off-set, as they require no arena rating:


Savage Gladiators Felshroud Set

This is a decent set to work on, but I would pass on the lower end
pieces because if you're serious about PvP you will be picking up the Hateful Gladiator's Set while playing arenas. That is why I chose the amice and cowl over the other pieces because you will be getting the deadly handguards, trousers, ect, as you acquire a higher arena rating. You may even want to skip this set altogether if you're able to get enough arena rating for the hateful pieces.
  • Amice - 50k honor or 9.6k honor + 275AP
  • Cowl - 60k honor or 12K honor + 350AP
  • Raiment - 60k honor or 12k honor + 350AP
  • Trousers - 60k honor or 12k honor + 250AP
  • Handguards - 50k honor or 9.6k honor + 275AP

Requires arena rating!
From here on all the pieces require an arena rating, only people serious about PvP need to look beyond the first parts of this guide. AR stands for arena rating.

As soon as you get enough rating you will want to pick up your second ring:

Hateful Gladiator's Felshroud
  • Cowl - (1735AR) 12k Honor 700AP
  • Raiment - (1675AR) 12k Honor 700AP
  • Trousers - (1645AR) 12k Honor 700AP
  • Amice - (1775AR) 9.6k Honor 550AP
  • Handguards - (1615AR) 7.2k Honor 400AP


Deadly Gladiator's Off-Set
  • Waist - (1630AR) 62k Honor
  • Feet - (1720AR) 62k Honor
  • Wrists - (1660AR) 39.4k Honor
  • Back - (1750AR) 47.4k Honor
  • Neck - (1600AR) 47.4k Honor

Deadly Gladiator's Felshroud
This set requires serious arena points, and a high arena rating. You will need to spend serious ammounts of time devoted to your arena teams in order to get these pieces.


Thursday, March 19, 2009

Rethinking Improved Succubus

I have been playing some arenas now and I am reconsidering respeccing to include improved succubus for the instant cast seduce. Having five different CC abilities (Seduce, Death Coil, Howl of Terror, Fear, and Shadowfury)will definitely increase the total time I will be able to keep one target crowd controlled. I do believe the arena may have turned in our favor if I was able to instant cast seduce.

Monday, March 16, 2009

To Improved Succubus Or Not To Improved Succubus

Improved Succubus
An instant cast seduce from your succubus is a very powerful CC ability, but is it powerful enough to merit putting 3 talent points into it? You don't get an increased time on it in PvP, but you do get an instant cast ability that doesn't depend on your characters' ability to cast.

If you are doing a lot of battlegrounds you will vary rarely have small battles of one or two people where this talent shines. If you are doing battlegrounds I recommend keeping your imp and having his phase shifted so that when you have mass battles people don't focus your pet and destroy him quickly, causing you to lose soul link.

Currently I don't believe it is worth wasting 3 talent points for in instant cast 10 second CC ability unless you're main arena is 2v2. Even if your main arena is 2v2 I suggest you strongly consider the 3 talent points you are spending on it; you could use the talents to pick up Soul Leech, or other talents that will be useful more often.

You also need to consider how much trouble you have getting CCed. Often I find that warlocks are the ones that people try to CC because we are so troublesome. If you're CCed and cant cast, this talent will help you CC your opponents until you're able to cast a deathcoil or shadowfury.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Destro Specced for PvP

I recently respecced my warlock destro from affliction for its PvP burst damage advantages. I'm starting to get used to how the build plays and what casting sequence I like. The only downside to the burst damage is you cant be concentrating on more than 1 target at a time. And when you get into the thick of things, people can take you down really fast. I will save detailed talent thoughts for later posts.

PvP has turned into a world of burst damage. You can't sit back and fear kite people with afflction anymore because everyone has multiple fear wards. You can still fear people as a destruction lock but I only use it as a backup if I have to fight more than two people at once. With my current spec my rotation is: immolate, incinerate, chaos bolt conflag, fear, and when they get close to death I do a shadowfury, incinerate, conflag, and shadowburn. Depending on the situation I may throw in a deahcoil or shadowfury early on if i'm being attacked.

Another thing I would like to mention is the power of our demonic teleport. I like having a pad up at all times in case I run into a pesky melee class. If possible I like to keep my demonic pad on the opposite side of an object so I can teleport out of sight and then make a quick getaway.