Hello everybody, I’ve been playing in MoP server for couple months and I’ve been playing Warlock since TBC, it’s my favourite class. Always will be, and wanted to share my PvP Affliction Build with you, hope you like it.
After Cataclysm disaster on Warlock, not including Rage of Firelands patch coz as we know Moonwell Chalice trinket gave us a breath in Cataclysm.And here we are Golden Age of Warlocks (especially for Affliction). We have snapshots, huge damage output and etc. etc.
First of all, lets talk about main skills;
Bane of Agony: Main damage dot it can stack up to 10, always keep this up in 10 stack!
Corruption: Damage layering dots just spread it keep it up always.
Unstable Affliction: Your dots saver dot which has cast time, and give damage and silence the person who dispells it. Always keep it up and save your dots from dispelling.
Fear: We all know this but use this a lot it can save lifes and take lifes in pvp
Malefic Grasp: Your pathetic channeling skill, it only does proc your dots faster and we need this to get our Agony stacks 10 faster,otherwise never cast this peice of hamburger unless you’re aiming someone to kill him.
Drain Soul: Your finisher channeler, it increase your dots damage under %20 health. and deal double damage. Only use when your target under %20,
Haunt: Your only burst skill which has cast time. Use this skill on players who you want to kill 1vs1 et.c or guarantee thekill, it consume one of your soul shards and increase your dot’s damage.Otherwise don’t bother it.
Fel Flame: Your damage dealing instan skill while you kiting sticky melee classes such as Warriors,Feral Dudus…
Soulburn: Burn on your Soul Shard to enchants your skills
!!!Soul Swap: Coppies your current dots with exactly the same duration and paste another person when used second time.
!!!Soulburn: Soul Swap: Directly applies your three dots to current target.
Here we’re Stat priorities;
You may heard %6 Hit> Mastery>Haste>Critical but it’s definetly definetly
% 6 Hit>Haste Haste Haste>Mastery>Critical
Yes it’s true going on mastery will give you more damage output when you look in dumy, but we’re not standing and spamming skills in pvp enviremant as you all know. And that’s where Haste come in handy.Because as an Affliction Warlock you need to spread your dots to everyone even pets like candies. It doesn’t matter just spread and spread then you need focus on the fight, you should check your procs or cc Healers, slow objective carriers and list goes on. That’s why you should go for Haste. Mastery does increase your main dots damage but it’s not gonna speed your fear or GCD or any other thing, and with Haste Affliction Build, gameplay fluid so much to enjoy it a lot.So go for Haste -_-
Let's talk abuut Races
Best Races are Humans,Orcs,Trolls and Goblin for Warlock
Human: Their trinket Raciel and Sword Expertise, we're getting %1 Hit chance just using a Sward
Orcs: Their damage buff really good beside Pet damage aw yes
Trolls: I suppose this one best for Horde side, Their Haste buff awesome and also Ranged Expertise we're getting %1 Hit just for using a Wand.
Goblin: %1 Haste always love that and also Rocket Jump another saving CD for sticky Melees
Now,talents
Tier 1: Dark Regeneration: Healing over time to you and your pet. I can’t tell how many times this skill saved me and turn the tide of fight.Pretty awesome synergy with Healthstone.
And no-brainer. Others totally useless.
Tier 2: Shadowfury : AoE 3 sec stun is much much better than one man fear and heal in my opinion. Beside less cooldown makes it awesome choice.
Tier 3: Dark Bargain/Soul Link both will work good but if just started to play pvp as a Warlock Dark Bargain will help you a lot when you get all that fency items Soul Link will be good choice as well, but I’m using Dark Bargain atm.It can counter whole burst on me that why I love it.
Tier 4: Unbound will a second trinket always good especially with 1 min CD. You may see people using Blood Horror, it’s good yes but 1 charge fear I don’t think so.
Tier 5: Grimoire of Suprecy/Grimoire of Sacrifice both are awesome,personally I choose supremcy because I like playing with pets and they’re handy when you need to defend positions, especially against Sap using Rogues.
Tier 6: Definetly Archimonde’s Darkness, Dark Soul buff give you haste and 2 charge omg totally no brainer because your play style nearly instant and don’t need Kil’jaiden Cunning..
Oh man,it took too long well we’re at enchants and gems and profession.
Enchants: Jade Spirit For Main Hand(Windsong will help till get Jade but go for Jade!)
180 Int on Off-hand
170 Mastery on Cloak ( I guess I’m using Tailoring 2000 Int proc. enchant)
80 all stat on chest
180 Int on Bracer
170 Haste on Glove ( and again I’m using 1950 Int. buff Engineering Tinker)
Living Steel Belt Buckle on Belt
200 int 100 Critical on Shoulder
200 Int 100 Critical on Legs
Pandarian’s Step on Boots.
Gems:Red; 80 Int + 160 Hit if you don’t have enough hit otherwise 80 int + 160 Haste Orange
Blue: 160 Hit + 160 Haste Green
Yellow: go for 320 Haste Yellow
Prismatic: 320 Yellow(on belt)
Meta: 216 int %3 crtical untill you get PvP meta which gives PvP power and PvP Res.
Proffessions: Actually it doesn’t matter you can go Herbalism Engineering Tailoring jewelcrafting whatever you like.(but not mining and skining)
Reforge: First aim for %6 Hit
After that get Haste if one of your items don't provide any,if you have your 3rd option is Mastery.
Start reforging to Haste with Hit(if you don't need) then Critical and lastly Mastery,
I actually do not care about Breakpoints, go for straight Haste lower your GCD,cast time increase your ticks.
Why because gameplay is so fluid and fun to play with high amount of haste,spreading easy,cc easy,fear more faster.
Dots are ticking like hell,I'm pretty sure you will like gameplay.
It will feel slow in the beggining but when you around %17+ Haste fun beggins.
Gylphs;
Major: Glyph of Unstable Affliction: Faster cast speed awesome!
Glyph of Healthstone: Have a perfect synergy with Dark Regeneration
Glyph of Siphon Life: More survivebilty, with a decent gear your healing over time would be impressive.
Minor: Glyph of Gateway Attunement: Awesome for most situation(but bugged in server)
Glyph of Nightmare: Walk on water babe! ( unfortunatelly bugged as well :D )
At this point minor glyphs really doesn’t matter,choose whatever you like.
Ok but what we gonna do now?
Here’s what you gonna do;
Burn your Soul Shard with Soulburn then use Soul Swap to nearest target to apply your dots. Then took them from target with normal Soul Swap and spread around the screen do this over and over again. When done, seek for someone who got 10 stacks then reapply your dots again manually after this point use your all cooldowns and reapply them again with Soulburn. Then spread this god damn bursted dots to everyone, and melt the map boys melt the map. See someone dying? Cast Haunt to guarantee it. Otherwise focus on fear/silence/stun cc the map spreading and keep maintain your dots.Someone running cast your Curses!(Curse of Exhaustion). Do not waste any GCD to other spells. Create huge stress on healers with your dots and CC them. It’s easy to heal 1 person but it’s get hard to heal when everyone around the map get damage. Caught in a good pvp with someone then finally you can use your Malefic Grasp to him. You can always start the fight in this way too;
Apply dots manually, use malefic grasp make your Agony 10 then pop cooldowns and start spread, but I find this a little less effective coz untill 10 stack u were doing damage only 1 person,beside there’s no guarantee that your target won’t flee from your sight.
Survive: You have Unending Resolve which provide %40 damage reduction which is huge, that’s why I didn’t choose glyph of it,this skill will give you a fresh breath when you focused.Also you can use this with Dark Regeneration and Healthstone,it can fill your health if you disengage properly. And Twilight Ward, magic spell annoyer,especially love this skill against boomkins and shadowpriests.
Curses: Curse of Elements: Increase damage but personally not using it that much.
Curse of Exhaustion: Slow, using most of time slow flag carriers,rogues,warriors etc.
Curse of Enfeeblement: And use it to block people damage output,healers healings
Finally, curses are important you can save lifes with them so pay attention on them.
And cast your cc often, cast much much more Fear as possible as you can. Your damage output comes from your dots and while they applied focus on enemy player and annoy them.
WoW, it took too long sorry guys hope you like it,I will try to improve guide in future thanks for reading.And welcome to shadow council.
-
Member
A few notes from Ajore to all PvP Affliction Warlocks (Guide)
Edited: May 15, 2015
-
Member
Reserved for future purpose.
-
Member
Finally, we have a post to discuss a potential theory-crafting of Afflic locks on Warmane. However, there are things in this guide that I think could be explained much better.
Because of the GCD and DoTs bug, haste isn't as "valuable" as you claim. In that sense, Mastery has some value over haste as you will never allow your DoTs to run the full duration because of mechanics such as Pandemic. As you said, adding haste does save lives (the difference between 1.2 second and 1.1 second Fear is huge); yet, depending on what you are playing (bgs, arenas, world pvp), mastery could potentially overweigh haste if you are allowed to free cast.
As with Mist, Blizz made it much easier to change glyphs and talents, and so you should take advantage of that as much as possible (arenas, world pvp).
Talents:
Lvl 30 - Shadow Fury and Mortal Coil should be interchangeable depending on who you are going with. Since Blood Horror at Lvl 60 shares the same Diminishing Return(DR) with Mortal Coil, you should take Shadow Fury instead when facing melee teams. On the other hand, Mortal Coil is also useful against classes such as mage, as mages could easily blink out of your stun if they know what you are doing. Although it is really up to your personal preference of what kind of CC you want, you should learn to use both for different situations.
Lvl 45 and lvl 75: Generally, you want Grimoire of Supremacy(GoSup) and Soul Link together as your pet does not die that easily. On the other hand, you want Grimoire of Sacrifice(GoSac) with Dark Bargin together. However, as with other classes, these talents are interchangeable. For survival purposes as well as you wanting a pet for the "current non-existent pressure", you could take GoSup and Dark Bargin. Vice versa, GoSac and Soul link can increase your HP if necessary. And again, these are up to personal preference but as a general rule, you really never use a pet when you are facing heavy cleave teams (Beast Cleave, TSG) as you might as well as bind 'summon pet' onto every spell.
Lvl 60: The basic rule of thumb is Blood Horror for melee teams and Unbound Will for casters or heavy CCers (traps, mage freezes). For Unbound Will, as some might not know, it is a spell that does more than just acting like a free trinket, it also dispells magic effects; most commonly used against fire mages and when they have full dots on you.
Glyphs:
There are multiple and different glyphs that you will use in facing each team.
Glyph of Unstable Affliction: This is a must as once you stack Haste, a 0.8 - 0.9 second Unstable Affliction almost guarantees that no-one can interrupt it, except for a few people that are actually expecting you to cast Unstable Affliction. Yet in environments such as duels and the class you are going against, reducing cast speed by 25% does not really do much and you could use some other more beneficial glyphs.
Glyph of Eternal Resolve: This glyph works wonders when you have Soul Link and GoSup, especially with 2v2 teams that are specialized in longer game play (mirror matches with Affliction + healer). Although you do lose your 8 second moment-of-zen, the damage reduction adds up.
Glyph of Curse of Exhaustion: An extremely underrated glyph against melee classes that cannot dispel or remove your curses. Once properly set up after your opponent used all their defensive cds, you are almost able to kite them 24/7 and guarantee a kill.
Glyph of Demonic Circle: Although 4 seconds reduction really seems to be nothing, when you find yourself being trained from the beginning in arenas, this glyph saves more lives than is expected.
Glyph of Siphon Soul: This is the one glyph that you should keep at all times. As long as you have corruption up with 100% uptime it will heal for a tremendous amount over time and even more with 2 to 3 targets.
For Warlock's opener, you almost NEVER start off with soulburn + soulswap, because of how Pandemic works. In a perfect scenario, you would want to start off with applying individual DoTs then waiting for key CDs to proc, such as tailoring enchant or Jade Spirit, then use soulburn + soulswap. Because of how snapshotting works, your DoTs not only increases tick damage, but also increases the duration by half because of Pandemic. Especially in 3v3 (which is basically dead on Warmane), you would almost find yourself GCD starved (plus with the GCD bug) that you will never find yourself casting Malefic Grasp, rather use fear or fel flame if you are afraid of being spell-locked.
Of course, unless your rotation was messed up half-way through, soulburn + soulswap can instantly get you back on track and especially when you need to get that damage output rolling.
Curse of Elements is way more useful than you have suggested. Because of how Affliction warlocks are a more controlly class, damage over time with intaking 5% magic dmg makes a HUGE difference. But in general with curses and especially when you glyphed for Curse of Exhaustion, you want to interchangeably switch curses depending on the situation. Curse of Exhaustion without the glyph is almost useless and you might as well as use Curse of Elements and hope for more damage output.
It's a great guide in general, however if you are able to color-code it (not sure if you can with this new forum design), it would be much easier to read.
-
Member
Thanks for reply ^_^ yeah I'm not well known about forum design but i'll make it much readable in future, totally agree with you I guess need to clarify it about BG's mostly.To be honest I didn't know about GCD and DoTs bug, well in that case I should check it again. And it has been long time since I talk someone with knowledge :) However, I want to add again, I need to state this one more likely help on BG's also thansk to all procs start at first, I always start fight with Souldburn actually always start fight with two Soulburn :D directly they will all proc immedialtly. And going on with instant gameplay and using less spell with our GCD's to spread much better I though :)
-
Member
Although the GCD and DoTs haste bug, I believe haste is still better than mastery because warlocks have so few defensive CDs that a few millisecond faster fear can be the difference between life and death.
The problem of double soulburn + soul swap is that you miss out on your haunt burst or even a defensive teleport out (soulburn + demonic teleport) by using an unnecessary soulshard. Especially in arenas, an extra haunt can be game changing as it is the only "burst" Affliction has.
-
Member
Totally agree about that in Arenas, wasting shards early could be a disaster clevers players waits for it then disengage quickly till dispell and or Warriors could directly Reflect them. In Arenas survive and mobility much more important and where we should carefull about our procs more than bgs.
That's why I don't use Unending Resolve Glyph's, with GoSup it really works well however in early stage of Warlock characters we need more damage reduction. I'm thinking on an update when I finished my Conquest PvP set. I used to choice Soul Link and Unending Resolve Glyph however I need more survive atm :D and healing of dots omg at the moment :D Thanks for all contributions.Edited: May 16, 2015
-
Member
Unending Resolve was a glyph 90% of the top warlocks on Live used during the last season, apperently its base use isnt half as useful as its passive ability with the glyph.
the prefered proffs were like tailoring and i think eng. for the proc/onuse things (im not so sure about eng in this but i do know tailoring was prefered for the cloak enchant)
as for the talents, Soul link is a must in pvp as dark bargin was heavy nerfed were its dmg reduce was altered by another stat or something (i forgot what it was). the rest of the talents were correct (though its not a matter of Supremecy vs sacrifice, you use supremecy when they arnt going after your pet, and sacrifice when your fighting a comp that can and will focus your pet. and you also only use shadow fury if your comp doesnt already have a **** load of stuns)
the "dpsing" was litterally just getting your trinkets, weapon (and cloak if you had it) proc's then use ur dmg skill and apply your dots to a target get em to max duration and copy them to all of the targets. while your dps focus's someone, and you cc chain ppl. your dmg rest of the fight was generally meh vs good teams on live as they could just quickly out heal your stuff (but you could still apply pressure but if you wanted to KILL them you had to use all of the procs and offensive cds you had to kill em)
but all in all it was a good guide even if there was some incorrect info.
Quote
