[GUIDE] Warlock PvP Guide- Cataclysm

[Drakeh]

Warlock Cataclysm PvP GUIDE

Forewords:

This is warlock pvp guide . In many ways this is a work in progress. In I do not claim to be an expert and all of this guide was based on information I found on internet . If you see anything inaccurate or wrong please let me know and i will change it. I made this guide because I saw many many people complaining that they can't beat X class in pvp or can't do Y damage. I hope this helps you.

NOTE: Work still in progress. Also I am not expert in english language so there might be many gramatical mistakes. If you see any let me know and I will fix it.

Demons
DoTs
Soul shards/New Spells/Cataclysm Changes
Races
Specs
Glyphs
a) Affliction
b) Destruction
c) Demonology
Stats
Gearing/Enchantments/Reforging/Gems
Consumables
Utility spells
addons
Useful Macros

Demons:

Imp - This is the first demon all warlocks learn to summon. He is the main Demon used by destruction specced warlocks in PVE but it can also be used for pvp. It has 1 useful ability - Singe Magic. It removes 1 harmful effect from the warlock or friendly target.


VOIDWALKER- He is main soloing minion and provides a nice shield for PVP. It has 2 useful abilities: Consume Shadows: it increases stealth detection to all friendly targets within 30 yards. Cannot be used while in combat and Sacrifice - shield skill. NOTE: YOU SHOULD ONLY USE HIM IF YOU ARE IN DEAP TROUBLE. IN OTHER FIGHTS USE OTHER PET.


FELHUNTER- This is the primary minion for affliction, and for destruction in PVP. I can devour beneficial magic effects from an enemy with Devour Magic, silence with Spell Lock and increase maximum mana and mana regeneration toll all party and raid members.


SUCCUBUS -Currently she is the pet of choice for CC. She is the favored minion for many destruction warlocks in PVP. It can: Seduces the target, preventing all actions using Seduction or Instantly knocks back all enemies within 5 yards with Whiplash

FELGUARD - This is the Demononlogy only pet. Used mainly for AoE. Best felguard Abilities:
Axe toss- Stun
Felstorm- mostly pve skill but is sometimes useful for inflicting aoe.


GUARDIANS
We warlocks have two guardian minions. These minions share a cooldown and when summoned will fight beside warlock and permanent minion then die.

Doomguard- This is single target guardian pet. He was once really impressive, but now he is nothing more than a really really big imp. Single target dps cd.

Infernal- He starts out as a meteor and stuns all enemies within his area of effect then procedes to create fire aoe damage.

DoTs

Warlocks are a DoT class. Dots are Damage over time spells and all three specs use them. The basic thing that warlocks need to realize when using dots is that they are LESS DPS (damage per second) than direct damage spells like shadowbolt, searing pain, or incinerate. While dots are less DPS they are more DAMAGE PER CAST TIME (DPCT). You want to cast your highest DPCT spells first then moving down the list to your next highest DPCT spell and then the one after that till it is feasible to cast your highest DPCT spell again. More often than not your lowest DPCT spell will be a spammable nuke or drain.
Clipping-Clipping is when you recast a dot before its duration is over. This used to be a big dps loss but that changed with patch 4.0. Now rather than resetting the time before the dot tick it now starts the new timer after the dots next tick. With the exception of bane of agony your goal is now to cast the dot right before the last tick for maximum dps. Never clip Agony due to its increasing tick value.

Soul shards/New Spells/Cataclysm Changes

Soul shards are new reagent added in Cataclysm which we use to empower our spells.
We can have no more than 3 shards are one time. We only have so many ways to aquire more after using these 3 shards up, so we must be careful when using them. We empower our spells by using our soul shards throgh the ability SOULBURN. When soulburned the following abilities give the following effects:

Drain Life:Reduces Channel time by 50%
Soul Fire: Makes Soul fire an instant cast spell
Searing Pain:increases the crit chance by 100%, and subsequent searing pain by 50% for 6seconds
Healthstone=Increases maximum health by 20% for 8 sec
Demonic Circle=Increases movement speed by 50% for 8seconds after teleporting
Summon Demon: Make the all spells summoning your imp, succubus, voidwalker, felhunter, and felguard instant cast

Getting more soul shards-

We have a few ways to get more soul shards including:

Harvest Souls- Cannot be cast when in combat. 30second cooldown
Drain soul-If the target dies while being drained, and yields experience or honor, the caster gains 3 Soul Shards
Shadowburn-If the target dies within 5 sec of Shadowburn, and yields experience or honor, the caster gains 3 Soul Shards. Only usable on enemies that have less than 20% health.

Races

Alliance:

1) Human/Dwarf
Human is the best here if you have a signifinant amount of resilience and can afford to swap insignia for a good PVE trinket or 2nd pvp dps trinket

2) Worgen
The critical strike chance increase is good to have, espesially as destruction/demonology. The movement increase is not bad either for kiting, however the cooldown is a bit high.

3) Gnome
Escape artist is good, but very much like the stoneform, however only usable with slows/roots.

Horde:

1) Goblin
1% haste is quite good, and if you can find a good balance between using Rocket jump/barrage this is the best race for a warlock.

2) Orc/Undead
Orc is definately the best choice if you plan on playing demonology, but it is good no matter what spec, the pet damage increase is always good but 15% stun reduction is also nice if you find yourself being trained alot.
I play as affliction so for me here the will/cannibalize is niffty to have in arena.

3) Troll/Blood Elf
I will say, personally that troll is better than blood elf here, we spend most of our time away from enemies, the movement imparing effect reduce is also good and health regen.
Arcane Torrent is good nevertheless, you can use it out of a CC or use it as a blanket silence, saving your spell lock.

Specs:

I couldn't find any working culculator for patch 4.0.6. Post if you find one

Glyphs

Affliction- Glyph of Corruption, Glyph of Haunt, Glyph of Bane of Agony, or Glyph of Unstable Affliction
Destro-Glyph of Conflagrate, Glyph of Chaos Bolt, Glyph of Immolate,
Demo-Glyph of Corruption, Glyph of Immolate, Glyph of Felguard, Glyph of Incinerate, Glyph of Metamorphosis


Major

Affl-Glyph of Soul Swap , Glyph of Howl of Terror, Glyph of Demonic Circle, Glyph of Shadowflame, Glyph of Soul Link,
Destro-Glyph of Demonic Circle, Glyph of Shadowflame, Glyph of Soul Link, Demo-Glyph of Demonic Circle, Glyph of Shadowflame, Glyph of Soul Link, Glyph of Healstone

Minor-
-whatever you want except get Glyph of Curse of Exhaustion if you spec into it. Drain soul is also highly recommended for min/maxing

Stats

Hit:

It is important that you obtain 4% hit, this is the PVP hit cap in cataclysm, with the removal of reduced chance to be hit talents/racials it is rather easy to obtain.
Now that you can reforge you should easily be able to obtain the hit cap, however i dont think you will need to do this.

Spellpen:

195 is the highest spell resistance buff that is achieveable as far as buffs go.
However mages can obtain 240 resistance with shadow protection.
Another thing to note is that felhunter has 170 resistance to all magic(255 shadow resistance with an undead player)

This means that 240 spell penetration is a safe zone, pets which you wish to banish, you can just throw a curse of the elements on hence reducing targets resistance by 184.
If you are affliction you can spec into jinx and relying on curse of the elements alone, but this is only 184 spell pen(out of the 195 minimal) meaning you have to gem or enchant your back with 70 spell penetration to achieve the minimum/maximum cap.

I, myself prefer using the spell penetration back, providing 201 spell pen. Meaning that mages and felhunters i can just throw up a curse of the elements.
(or you could go with spell pen back+70 pen enchant, but honestly this is abit overkill)
Basicly: you can settle for 195 spell pen IF you can manage your curse of the elements, otherwise you should settle for 240 if you cant.

Haste:

Haste has 3 different effects on your spells. It decreases the cast time of your spells and it decrease the length of the GCD. It also decrease the intervals of dot ticks. The way it decreases intervals between dot ticks is unique though, as it it will change the total duration of your spell based on your the number of dot ticks. As you gain haste the total duration of your dot will decrease. However, When you gain enough haste to add half a tick to the original dot length the game will round up and add a full tick and making the overall spell last longer than it did originally.

You should aim for 10% haste, 7% if you can manage to keep Dark Intent up.
If you play goblin you can settle for 9% haste, or again 6% if you manage to keep Dark Intent up.
This adds another tick to corruption/immolate

Mastery:

Mastery is good, however not worth to gem for. In yellow sockets you should gem 20 intellect 20 haste, or 20 int 20 hit(depending on weather you have reached the PVP hit cap or not, also if you got the 10% haste mentioned earlier, you can gem mastery, but more haste doesnt hurt)

Crit:

Crit is ok to have, but its not something worth stacking up, I tend to reforge away crit.
This is however your descission, go for what you feel confertable playing with.

Intellect:

Pretty self explainatory, the more intellect you got, the better

Resilience:

Most important stat in pvp. It reduces all damage done by other players and their pets. You should always try to get as much resilience as you can.

Gearing

For starters, youÔÇÖre going to want to obtain pieces from the Fireweave and Emberfire crafted sets. If you have all 8 pieces from the crafted set(s), you should have about 1300-1500 resilience.

The Crafted Gear:
Although there are two different sets, Emberfire and Fireweave. Mix of both sets provides the most optimal stats when gearing as a Warlock. Always keep in mind the order Intellect>Haste>Mastery>Crit when gearing as an Affliction Warlock. However, you should always achieve necessary Spell Penetration and Spell Hit values before going for any of these stats. Items you should get

[Emberfire Cowl]

[Fireweave Shoulders]

[Fireweave Robe]

[Emberfire Bracers]

[Emberfire Gloves]

[Emberfire Belt]

[Fireweave Pants]

[Emberfire Boots]

To craft these items, you will need the following materials: 74x[Bolt of Embersilk Cloth], 20x[Volatile Water], 12x[Volatile Air], 32x[Volatile Fire]

The biggest upgrade that you can buy from honor is 2 pieces of the Bloodthirsty GladiatorÔÇÖs Felshroud set. You should buy the [Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Felweave Amice] and the [Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Felweave Handguards], seeing as these are the cheapest pieces. The reason for buying two mainset pieces is to obtain the 2 piece set bonus of +70 intellect and +400 resilience. Even though you have crafted pieces in the glove/shoulder slots, this is still the biggest upgrade that you can get simply because the 2 piece set bonus is incredible.

Following this upgrade, I would recommend purchasing the [Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Medallion of Tenacity] if you do not already have a PvP trinket. If you still have the level 80 epic PvP trinket, you should buy upgrades for slots without resilience. Ex: neckpiece, rings, cloak, etc.

Weapons
In terms of weapons, youÔÇÖre going to need to do instances, heroic instances, or raids in order to obtain one. The best weapon for PvP is the Tier 1 or Tier 2 Dagger, but you need conquest points and/or rating to buy one of these. There are numerous caster weapons in heroics, but there are a few that I believe are best itemized for a Warlock.

Main Hand
[Blade of the Burning Sun] ÔÇô This item is obtained by killing Rajh in Heroic Halls of Origination.

Off-Hand
There is only one real option for your offhand slot, and that happens to be the [Battle Tome]; an easy-to-obtain crafted item. It is the only offhand with resilience available before the Vicious GladiatorÔÇÖs offhand, so I strongly suggest that you invest in it! The materials are: 10x[Resilient Parchment], 8x[Inferno Ink], 24x[Volatile Life], and 6x[Volatile Fire].

Trinkets, Rings, and Neck
Trinkets
If you can grind the honor for it, I would strongly recommend buying pvp trinket first and then [Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Badge of Dominance] If youÔÇÖre still working on your honor grind, you should be using the [Witching Hourglass] trinket that drops off the last boss of Heroic Blackrock Caverns.

Rings
For rings, you should grind the honor for [Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Band of Accuracy], and also the [Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Band of Cruelty]. You also have the option of using [Lavishly Jeweled Ring] from Heroic Deadmines. I am currently using this ring due to the hit and socket it has. One thing to note is that it has an item level of 346, whereas both PvP rings have an item level of 352. If your resilience is too low I wouldnÔÇÖt recommend using this item. If you feel like you could drop a bit of resilience, I would recommend using [Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Band of Accuracy] and [Lavishly Jeweled Ring] as your two rings.

Neck
For your neck slot, you should try to obtain the [Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Pendant of Alacrity]. Another option for those of you with little-to-no spell penetration is the [Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Pendant of Diffusion]. Note: You will probably end up replacing this neck with the Alacrity neck once you are able to put enough Spell Pen gems in your gear. If you do not have the honor to spare, you should be using [Pipefish Cord] from Heroic Throne of the Tides. Alternatively, you can spend Justice Points on [String of Beaded Bubbles].

Enchants and Item Enhancements

You should generally be using the cheaper enchants for crafted gear, although you can still go with the top-of-the-line enchants if youÔÇÖre willing to foot the bill. It can be quite expensive to buy the best enchants because Maelstrom Crystals are still very rare, causing these enchants to be unbelievably expensive.

Head ÔÇô [Arcanum of Hyjal] Requires revered reputation with Guardians of Hyjal and when you have good head item use Arcanum of Vicious Intellect

Shoulders - Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone. When you get honor or conquest item use Greater Inscription of Vicious Intellect

Cloak ÔÇô Enchant Cloak - Greater Spell Piercing or Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect

Chest ÔÇô Enchant Chest - Mighty Resilience

Bracer ÔÇô Enchant Bracer - Greater Speed or Enchant Bracer - Speed

Gloves ÔÇô [Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery] or [Enchant Gloves - Haste]

Belt ÔÇô Ebonsteel Belt Buckle

Legs ÔÇô Powerful Enchanted Spellthread or Enchanted Spellthread

Boots ÔÇô Enchant Boots - Lavawalker or Enchant Boots - Earthen Vitality

Main Hand ÔÇô Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent or Enchant Weapon - Hurricane If you can afford Power Torrent, itÔÇÖs the best enchant you can buy. DonÔÇÖt buy Power Torrent if you plan on replacing your weapon soon.

Offhand ÔÇô Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect

Gemming

There are generally only a few different gems that you are going to use as a Warlock.

Meta ÔÇô Forlorn Shadowspirit Diamond is a great meta gem for Affliction. I would use Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond as Destruction or Demonology.

Red ÔÇô Brilliant Inferno Ruby

Yellow ÔÇô Reckless Ember Topaz or Willful Ember Topaz

Blue ÔÇô Stormy Ocean Sapphire, Veiled Demonseye, or Timeless Demonseye if you donÔÇÖt need Spell Hit or Spell Penetration.

Reforging

When reforging you will try to trade lesser stats for greater ones. Your first goal when reforging is to try and hit the hit cap after you have gemmed your gear. In generals it goes hit to cap>haste>mastery>crit.

Addons:

These are recommended addons:

Power auras classic
Drain soul timer
Lock notes
Dot timer
ForteXorcist (probably best dot addon for multidotting)
Deadly boss mods
healbot/vuhdoo/grid+Clique

Macros:

Curse of exhaustion rogue finder

The curse of exhaustion macro will cast curse of exhaustion on any enemy target close to you. Its called a rogue finder macro because if a rogue is nearby and you spam it the INSTANT the rogue is close enough you can see them you snare them.


#showtooltip Curse of Exhaustion
/console targetNearestDistance 15.000000
/targetenemy [noharm][dead]
/console targetNearestDistance 41.000000
/cast [harm,nodead] Curse of Exhaustion
/dismount [target=target,exists]



Focused Seduction macro-

The seduction macro will focus your target and seduce it upon cast. From here pressing the macro will re-seduce your Focus (your former target) if its still alive allowing you to target other mobs while keeping your CC assignment seduced. NEW targets will NOT be seduced so long as your focus is alive. Pressing it during seduction will break seduction and re-seduce your focus. Pressing alt will clear your focus and make your current target the new focus and seduce it.

#showtooltip
/clearfocus [modifier:alt]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/petstay
/petfollow
/stopcasting
/cast [pet:succubus,target=focus,exists,harm] Seduction; Seduction



Focus banish macro

The focus banish macro isnt nearly as complex. It will banish your current target if pressed and will banish your focus if you press it while having the alt button down.

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt, target=focus, exists] Banish; Banish



Mouseover macros allow you to cast spells on mobs simply by hovering your mouse over them. No need to target at all.



Mouse over Banish

/cast [@mouseover, exists] []Banish; Banish



Mouse over fear

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, exists] [] Fear


All in one pet button

All in one combines multiple pet macros into one. Succubus out? it seduces your target and holding down shift while pressing it will seduce your focus. Same thing with felhunter and spell lock. Imp will use singe magic. Pressed voidwalker will cast sacrifice. Using shift will make him use consume shadows (rogue finder).

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift, target=focus, exists] Seduction; Seduction
/cast [modifier:shift, target=focus, exists] Spell Lock; Spell lock
/cast Singe Magic
/cast [mod:shift] Consume Shadows; Sacrifice


The following Macros were provided by Eruushia. They allow you to spam these macros without having to toggle the targetting circle on and off:

/cast !Rain of Fire

/cast !Summon Infernal


Soulburn is not on the gcd so you can macro soulburn abilities such as soulfire:

/cast Soulburn
/cast Soul Fire

Works for all soulburning abilities such as healthstone, pets, port, and drainlife.