Warlock pvp strats and specs vs all the other classes?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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anyone got a guide for pvp vs other classes?

also for alliance / horde (mostly alliance vs forsaken).

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I don’t think there is a go-to guide for warlock vs other classes in PvP like guides on PvE as PvP is mostly opinion based, based off of the person’s play style.

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Seuche had a guide. Not sure if it is still available.

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Run Soul Link, dot ppl up, and drain life. you win 1v1 vs everything.

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well lets make a “guide” here!

i know its all theory crafting but bleh . its something to do .

i wasnt really meaning an actual guide but i meant more of peoples personal strats and tricks i might not remember coming back to classic since however long ago.

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thats all well and good but im asking more for people on either faction vs each other on a class by class basis.

hehe thats pretty funny :smiley:.

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All I know is that every time I fought a Warlock, I usually ended up killing him however, I almost always ended up either dead or eating food/bandaging furiously to try and stay alive while his DOTS ticked away.

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Warlock DoTs are not to be messed with lol.

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so lets say lock vs ud rogue.

i would probably say sl build with a vw out to sac for shield.

start out get sapped or stunned . (does the trinket for locks get rid of stuns?)

once the stun chain has a break (be spamming deathcoil) hit deathcoil.
drop dots on him.
he runs back use the fear cast to bait his wotf .
coexh if you have it then kite or drain life till 5 seconds has passed .
once he gets close again hit howl and then fear kite him till the dots kill him dead.

the end.

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I think why for the most part: the way you play a warlock is majorly the same no matter who you face. You pretty much just put all of your DoTs on them and try to out live them. (Not including all of the other inner workings)

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No it does not. Fear/Charm/Sheep only, crapy trinket.

Melee classes are warlocks weakness unless you have succubus out.

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Set Succubus on Defensive, make sure seduce is on, turn off lash of pain, and she’ll seduce the first player that gets a hit without you having to do anything.

I liked to use that while guarding flags in AB/AV. It seemed to work pretty well for disrupting a rogue’s opener.

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There’s 6 different completely viable Warlock PvP builds I can think of off the top of my head…

  1. SM/Ruin
  2. NF/Conflag
  3. Deep Destro
  4. SM/DS
  5. Soul Link/Shadowburn
  6. Soul Link/ Affliction

They all play differently, and have different spell priorities in combat, and will play against different classes differently as well. Furthermore, even among identical specs, there’s massive room for variation… particularly on a more versatile spec like SM/Ruin, where 3 different SM/Ruin locks might each play the spec differently depending on pet choice and combat preferences. Finally, I’d point out, that more than just your spec, your gear might impact your choices as well… A lock with more crit is going to favor ruin builds generally, and if they have more crit/spellpower vs +shadow they may favor mixing in more fire spells than other locks would.

So basically, you’re trying to ask for a short paragraph summary on something I could write an entire book about. Maybe you could narrow your question down to a specific chapter by maybe explaining what in particular you’d like to accomplish in pvp on the lock, playstyle wise?

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  1. Play Warlock

2…X not required.

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Be Drakedog. Get lucky. Melt faces.

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i wanna pwn melee classes and priests.

sorry im being needy :frowning: i either want to be sm/ruin or sl/affliction

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All 6 of those builds can do both of those things, none of them are particularly weak. That being said… I’ll do a run down on each I suppose…

  1. https://classicdb.ch/?talent#IE0bhRbkAZZgx0tM0z

Optional talents:
-Affliction tree is Fel Concentration, take the points from Imp Agony and 2 from Suppression…
I prefer suppression for fear duration and Agony as filler (Fel conc not maxxed is imo useless)… I also don’t drain-tank all that often in pvp because I don’t like hard casting shadow school in melee range… and would likely searing pain spam instead.

-Optional talent Destro tree is 2 points cataclysm (mana cost reduction) for 2 points aftermath (chance to proc a snare). I’d actually prefer aftermath for pvp, but it puts a debuff up that is a no go for PvE… That also being said, it’s such a low proc chance @ 2 points that you just can’t depend on it at all, and once you learn your casting without it, it’s of little value.

This is the most versatile build in the game… With high levels of +Shadow you can dot people 100-0 to death… Dot and Drain people, Dot and Kite people, or just outright nuke them from orbit and delete them in a global.

Primary weakness is that it’s almost entirely single spell school (shadow) which means lockouts can be a problem, and that it tends to be a bit “glass cannon”. You can find dozens of videos of this build online since it’s also a strong raid build.

  1. https://classicdb.ch/?talent#IE0bbRbZZxx0tMbtt
    Optional talents
    -Affliction: Same deal with Fel Conc
    -Destruction: If you prefer going heavier fire you can move 5pnts Improved Shadowbolt into 5 points Cataclysm… And if you really want to go nuts towards fire, you can siphon 2 points out of Grim Reach (affliction range talent) for 2 more points in improved Searing pain.

This is a pvp variant of SM/Ruin that gives up dot power for more nuke power/versatility. It’s potentially a true dual-spell school build and you would be favored running crit and spellpower vs SM/Ruin mostly prefering straight +shadow… It’s much better on the move than SM/Ruin (via better damage on short cast fire nukes and Conflag being an instant cast) and much better at casting vs melee (via being able to better use both fire and shadow schools). It’s also EXTREMELY strong with a succubus for Seduce-lockdown combos.

  1. https://classicdb.ch/?talent#Ii0bZbxZxx0tMxtt
    Optional talents… There’s a ton here…
    -Affliction… Suppression vs Imp Corruption is a potential debate… Corruption is nice to dot a stealth without wasting a curse on them… Suppression makes your affliction spells (specifically fear) less likely to resist (which means your fear is less likely to fail a resist check when a feared target takes damage… meaning your fear has a longer effective duration)…
    -Snowflake talent option… This deep destro fire setup is also one of the only builds that can run IMP as a pet in pvp without issue, in which case you’ll likely want all 5 of the potential talent points into it, turning that little sucker into a machine gun… It’s not as strong or safe as a succubus/felhunter… but the damage output is pretty nuts when added to your own
    -Destruction: Again you can mix/match between heavier fire talents or keeping yourself more balanced with Imp-shadowbolt.

See any drakedog video 3 or later. He ran heavy destro… It’s tankier than NF/Conflag (which is a bit glass cannon) but you have almost no dot power

  1. https://classicdb.ch/?talent#IA0bVRbkAZbxfzrho
    Optional talents: ’
    -Affliction The same debate between Suppression/Agony and Fel Concentration applies, but this build imo wants fel concentration for draining… You can even dump CoExhaustion for points into imp drain life to further boost your drains
    -Demo anything not maxed is entirely optional/irrelevant… you are saccing your pet

This build gets terrifying by the naxx gear levels via dot scaling with +shadow… You can sac a VW (health regen) or a Succubus (even more shadow damage)… A single naxx geared warlock with this build and a succubus sacrifice will 100-0 anyone with 3 instant cast dots, unless those people are healed/dispelled… and the combined Succy Sac (15% shadow), Shadow Mastery (10% shadow), Curse of Shadows (10% shadow), and +10% drain life healing (if you get that talent) give this build a downright absurd amount of self healing while dealing an absurd amount of damage from drain life. It’s mindless and people will hate you, but it’s insanely strong in good-great gear via the ridiculous modifier stacking. Thank god it’s an atrocious pvE build and most raiders are too cheap/lazy to respec constantly, because the build doesn’t work nearly as well at low gear levels.

That being said, I’d say the VW sac variant is your best bet for AV farming, you just dot from max range at their raid, and the VW sac’s regen effectively gives you unlimited health to lifetap with over time.

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reserved/continued

  1. https://classicdb.ch/?talent#Ii0bZbxuzgxotZxx0z

Optional talents:
-Demo you can get more pet mana over imp VW if you really want.
-You could theoretically get 2% crit on nukes vs 2 points in suppression

This is the soul link build everyone remembers from Vanilla… See Dacke-2 for an idea of playstyle. You basically play it a lot like an SM/Ruin lock, but with shorter range, and a stupid amount of more effective health. Strengths is that it’s strong enough to kill just about everyone… Weakness is that it’s lacking on range (and can get kited by very good hunters /warlocks)… can get cleaved hard (since the pet is taking damage for you, a combat rogue with blade flurry up is going to annihilate your pet)… Unlike the above builds, it doesn’t really have a condition where it 100-0s a target, and you almost assuredly are going to take moderate-substantial damage each fight, so chaining targets back to back will get very problematic… Or to phrase it better, I once won a 5v1 on my lock as SM/Ruin because I globaled 3 of the people before howl of terror wore off… You can hit those kinds of super rare “GRAND SLAMS” as the above builds, where this build is more like a consistent single/double and those builds have much more potential to “strike out”

  1. https://classicdb.ch/?talent#IA0bVRbZbxuzgxot
    This is a build you play when you are very undergeared or very overgeared. Basically you don’t try and win with this build, as much as you try to “not lose” You just sit around tickling people with weak dots and downright OBSCENE survivability. It’s an outstanding dueling build… but that’s about the only kind thing I can say about it… Weakness includes the target having a healer when you don’t because you have zero chance of landing a kill until the healer is drained of mana… and like all soul link builds, opposing warlocks who banish your pet can ruin your day pretty fast.

EDIT:

For succubus usage in particular, I’ll try and shed some light on WHY certain things are done or not done…

Succubus users almost invariably run SM/Ruin, NF/Conflag, or Deep Destro builds… (technically SM/DS uses one as well, but it’s using her for demo sac and won’t count here)… Soul Link builds don’t use the succubus often because they lack the nuke power to global a target before Seduce hits full DR (via not having ruin), because they lack the range talents to properly seduce nuke things (more on that below), and because the succubus is a really soft pet health wise, and Soul link will straight up kill a ho quickly…

Now, if given the chance, you want to set up a big nuke off a seduce, because you only get 3 of them per target… That means you want to be either casting Soul Fire (costs a shard) or Shadowbolt. -I- generally prefer nuking builds with “Improved Shadowbolt” (t1 destro) and using shadow bolt as my main nuke, because it’s a hell of a lot more sustainable shard wise, and because, if it crits, that 20% shadow damage debuff will aid you with your next bolt, or with the shadowburn-execute (which you COULD use sburn earlier, but I prefer as an execute for shard sustainability reasons)… Even as NF/Conflag or “Deep Destro” builds, I’ll end up preferring Sbolt most of the time… Soul Fire wastes shards, and Searing pain is too fast a cast/won’t hit hard enough.

I mentioned range talents before and I’ll explain now why they are so critical… Your baseline fear spell is 24 yards. Your baseline nuke/dot range is 30 yards… The two range talents (aff and destro trees) add 6 yards to both. Your adjusted range is now 36 yards for nukes and 30 yards for fear. Why is this important? Because it’s possible to entirely lock a person down/out from ever touching you with that increased range.

Charge/intercept has a 25 yard range, for example… Let’s say you used a succubus to seduce, and you sit at 30 yards and charge Sbolt up…

Your second cast HAS TO BE a 1.5 second either immolate or Searing pain after that to combo into the warrior during the sbolt’s travel time. You can’t cast fear because it’s only a 24 yard range

Now get the range talents…

SM/Ruin build: You seduce, and stand 36 yards away… You cast sbolt, and have time to cast A SECOND SBOLT before the warrior closes the distance enough to intercept you. You can now re-seduce, move to 30 yards, cast Sbolt again and piggy back it with a 30 yard fear (and it will land a millisecond after your bolt)… From there you could dot the target up while he’s feared, or charge up another bolt without him being able to do a damn thing about it.

NF/Conflag: Now the above depends on PERFECT range placement, and why NF/Conflag builds get popular, is because that seduce lockdown is MUCH easier to accomplish… You’ll lose a hefty chunk of top end off Sbolt and Sburn, but you get a nuke combo in immo-Conflag that only takes 1.51 seconds to cast and hits just as hard as that second bolt, which gives you a TON more wiggle room range wise to cast and blow things up without having to have perfect placement…

Now you can sit anywhere from 31-36 yards, Sbolt->immolate->conflag (cast re-seduce as your immolate lands)… All 3 spells hit at nearly the same exact time, and target is reseduced within 1.5 seconds.

So, now you have the basics casting/seduce combos, it’s time to add the dirtiest combo you have, and that’s offensively deathcoiling. Most people only use it defensively, and that’s a mistake, imo… because it’s absurdly good for just deleting a person…

Take the SM/Ruin build before…
1 .Seduce–>Curse of Shadows while moving to 36 yards
2. Sbolt 1----> Sbolt 2 is in the air before target can close distance
3. Reseduce while matching target’s movement so you are near 36 yards for second seduce
4. Sbolt 3 —>Sbolt 4 + Deathcoil
5. Sbolt 5----> Searing Pain + Reseduce (start seduce a millisecond into the SP cast)
6. Sbolt 6 + Shadowburn

You could theoretically swap the coil and searing pain, I prefer dropping it earlier because it forces the target back on it’s own, and you won’t have as much time to reposition on that final seduce…

But for reference, with ToEP or ZHC and beserker you can crit a shadowbolt for over 4k in bwl level gear… Most people only have 4500 hp and you just casted 6 shadow bolts, a searing pain, a deathcoil, and a shadowburn on a target who has never been outside of CC for more than a global at a time the entire “fight”. You don’t even need to crit to be able to pull that off… You do however, require an incredible amount of time uninterrupted to be able to do that to a guy… which can be considered a pretty big weakness to the seduce-nuke playstyle… It’s also not at all uncommon for a well geared warrior to drop you in 2 globals when they are finally able to connect to you, as it’s a “glass cannon” type build…

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ty :smiley: alot to think about there :smiley: i will dominate!