How to get out damage as affliction in arenas

Yes, its a serious question.

As far as i understand it, my basic rotation should be to keep up corruption, agony, and preferably UA on all 3.

My burst should be dark soul > singularity > darkglaire > rapid contagion > malefic rapture spam or big suck if i have it.

What i dont understand is howwwww

It seems like every game, by the time i have my port down, melee drones are smacking me, if they didn’t kick me on my gate in the first place. By the time i even get out a few globals for instant dots, im half hp. I end up needing to blow dark pact immediately. gating out, porting back, using coil to set up a fear just to create a chance for a UA or two.

i feel like i create zero pressure outside of major CDs which i know affliction is capable of. I know im doing something wrong, i just dont know what about my approach needs to change, but i shouldn’t be even with other dps in an arena, i should be top of the scoreboard every game. Not that scoreboard is the only important thing but i can tell im not doing meaningful damage.

Any locks have advice? i love this spec but if it’s that difficult to do damage i’ll just shelf the whole class. dont enjoy destro or demo nearly as much.

and i know im doing something wrong here, because when i fight affliction locks, even on counter classes and get beat, their damage feels unreal. I know its possible, just dont know how i can learn to be better than the zug zugs

**edit just going to add, i know my gear is crap, but i should still be able to do damage having double leggos and my 2pc

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Because you let off the pressure and they capitalize on it. The entire spec should literally never have pressure let off or you’re dead. That’s why I tell melee, when I did PvP in s1, to literally stick to the Aff locks and never, ever let off, under any circumstances.

In RBGs, which is what I did mainly, it was the same situation. My team kept getting mad at me because Icouldn’t do damage. I couldn’t do damage because their teams would stick to me like glue and my team got bored and tired of always chasing the Aff lock after 10 seconds or 15, and then the Aff lock would get free casts and obliterate the team, but it was my fault for their melee sticking up my behind so I couldn’t free cast.

Affliction does damage, but only if you let them. The DoTs themselves don’t do much damage, it’s the combination of GoSac, or some other gimmick like mega beefed up instant SBs from Necrolord plus DoT / rot for very little damage that ends up trucking people.

It’s why good players will tell you don’t let the Warlocks cast. If they do, it’s over, unless you LoS them.

Only double leggo matters for Aff, boosting up the gimmick of DS or SB. It only matters, too, if they let you do stuff which good players won’t.

Aff, also, relies more on dampening, too, a lot of times. This is especially the case in 2v2 arenas where you must play with a healer and survive into the dampening phase, then you can win, otherwise it’s ehh.

Ironically aff is better with a hybrid type dps in 2s than every healer but rdruid and hpriest

Fair enough, hybrids, RDruids and HPriests, there’s the 2s comps.