Hello, guys!
I recently came back to WoW and decided to give PvP a shot. I was never really into it before, but I’m actually having a blast in bgs.
The trouble starts when I step into arenas. I always become an instant target, like, the enemy team just locks on to me with all their hearts. Sometimes the healer can’t even keep up because I’m getting slammed by three players dumping everything on me. Once I step into that damned arena I get stunned, CC’d, feared (glad I’m Forsaken, at least!)
I’ve tried a few different strategies, using my portal, dropping my gateway, jumping around like a maniac, using the trinkets and all, but I can barely get a proper rotation off. There’s always a rogue, warrior, or hunter chasing me down like I owe them money or punched their grandma in the face.
I know I’m not the best at pvp and just started, so I’m totally open to advice on how to survive or at least not be a punching bag right off the bat.
Gear-wise, I think I’m in a decent spot thought there’s room for improvement. I’ve been picking up PvP gear and upgrading it steadily, so I don’t think gear is the main issue, though let me know if I’m totally off there hahahah
Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give! 
Short of running with a class people like to kill harder than you (Evoker maybe?), you’re pretty much always going to be a prime target as a warlock. Means a lot of your survival (beyond positioning and defensive use) is going to depend on your healer. Ironically, the reason Warlocks are so fun in BGs is the exact reason they’re not in Arenas. It’s easier to get the big damage rotation off when there’s 8 other people that dude was distracted by before looking for you. Arenas, you’re looking at 1 or 2 other people tops.
Short and sweet: Place your gateways defensively, make sure you have your teleport set behind a pillar for safety, play carefully, and most importantly, cross your fingers and hope you get a good healer. Best you can really hope for, dude. Even works that way for high level play. AWC players, Chan for example - dude’s got impeccable placement, great timing for defensives, but ultimately due to the limitations of the class for survivability. a lot of his not-dying is healer related.
It’s super kooky, because once upon a time Warlocks were the tanky casters. Now somehow they’re the squishy ones. If you’re willing to charcoal your own health bar, your movement’s pretty good. Guess there’s that at least? Your spells look way better than mages or priests.
I’m not the best warlock here but I do have 4 locks around 2400. I play a non caster comp so I get tunneled by every comp imaginable.
First versatility is important so you want to get more PvP gear, at least get your 2 PvP trinket set bonus, that alone gives you more stamina. Replace pve gear with honor gear. It scales up in PvP and gives plenty of vers. Then replace honor with conquest gear when you get enough.
2nd you don’t need to upgrade your PvP gear it scales up in arena and bg no matter what lvl it is. If you actively engage in world PvP then maybe you should upgrade it but if you only bg and arena stop wasting points upgrading it.
Once you get better vers and not be made of paper you can do a lot to survive .
- You can use dark pact high and while stunned. So use it often.
- Soul burn healthsone is a big heal+ it increases your hp for a bit, I like to use it in conjunction with dark pact. Soul burn hs then dark pact. The hp increase from soul burn hs boosts your dark pact even more
- I play short cd wall with the talent that decreases your cd on wall when hit. I find it very useful and can wall ever 1.5minutes to 2 minutes depending on how much I get hit.
- Play the short cd port PvP talent. And the long gateway PvP talent which is also lower cd. You can port every 20 seconds and gate every minute to help kite.
- Last resort if the team has no kicks you can spam fear defensively and coil. I personally play short cd howl and just double or triple howl them off me to give me breathing room.
Warlocks are the easiest kill in arena. Supatease posted a video with the actual stats, and Warlocks are the first kill 75% of the time in arena. So if you don’t die 75% of the time, you are above average. lol.
Just to be a bit pedantic (and because I saw people getting confused in the youtube comments how they die 75% of the time but have a 49% WR), that is just for Destro and it is 75% of your losses, not 75% of all games with a Destro in it. I think Destro had like a 49.5% Win Rate.
Which still works out to you being the one to die like 35% of the time you play an Arena match. Which is rough, and a lot higher than any other spec.