Looking for Tips (PVP)

[Shady-1500632 (Shady)]

Hi Fel or Void users !

I’m currently learning how to play my warlock as Afflcition. And if against ranged it’s 50/50, i dont know what to do against melee like Paladin, Warrior, Rogue and MistWeaver monk.

If you get some tips to teach me, i’m aware ! I don’t want to complain about these specs, just to know few tips i miss to survive enough for my mates. And if it can help me in 1v1 situation, it’s all bonus !

If you get some advices (even Youtuber to follow, i’m here !)… I just don’t want to “respec” thing. I’m in love about Affliction Warlock so…. !

[Viddius-1292445 (Viddius)]

Port on CD while keeping CoEX up and use shield when you don’t have gate/port when they have uptime on you. Use howl and coil. Try to get them to use their gap closer before you port and make sure your port is out of LoS so they have to waste a gap closer.

Just have to make it really hard for them to get to you, if you kite well enough they’ll stop attacking you. You can always bait them around a pillar, if you keep doing that enough then they won’t follow you and you can free cast.

[lolmage-1204263 (lolmage)]

Hi, first off just gonna say it so you are under no illusions about performance

Affli is playable but yeah even after some buffs affli has it hard vs a lot of meta comps, you have raw dps but the killing power is a bit underwhelming, that being said! you do have some great tools that somewhat make up for it.

Warlock GENERALLY is strong into most casters, it always kinda has been and you get to bully mages and position like a psycho

First big mistake most warlocks make vs melee however is getting stuck playing on a pillar, THE PILLAR IS YOUR ESCAPE, not your main position . you can’t cast fear while on a pillar its easy to get lined. What you ideally want is enough open space around you so that mr ret running at you has no escape from fear or CC.

My personal mentality when facing warrior or ret (something I can see running at me) is im dropping my gate /port at pillar but im moving asap so i can get space from my escape, make them chase me to pillar then gate back into the open and be really aggressive with my CC as they chase me back into the open. I’m willing to trade as aggressively with my defensives as they are with CDs to hound me down, if ret bubbles and absolutely all ins im willing to trade pact and UE.

70% of your pressure in melee match ups is less about what you can do to the dps and more about how much of a threat you are to the healer, its easy to get baited into kiting a pillar all game but it gives the enemy healer free rain to keep the pressure on you. you are not a mage your power is offensive CC and thicc pressure.

I’m not saying to “face tank it” but rather to you to see your positioning between open places and hide spots as having two completely different advantages , you obviously don’t want to take all of a ret pallys burst you kite that and hide from burst dps you cant CC but no one dies while you are unable to contribute CC offensively and pillars are hella good at denying fear.

For youtube I would recommend looking up Smellystinky, I know he mains demo but he also plays affli and I think most of his videos are really solid for explaining not just what to do but what approach you want to take

Another favourite of mine used to be Maldiva but sadly he hasn’t uploaded for about a year now, still his videos are good for looking on how to actually play, he doesn’t do guides just arena footage with him talking but sometimes you learn more watching game play than being told what to do

[Ulfrahn-b668e (Ulfrahn)]

I’ve played a lot of Warlock PvE over the years. For the last 2 seasons, I’ve been attempting to climb PvP in solo shuffle. I’m not even slightly exaggerating when I say all 3 specs feel unplayable against melee. I’m not a particularly good player but last season I met all my climbing goals as a mage so I’m by no means a novice when it comes to playing arena as a caster.

People will always tell you to kite more if you want to survive. The problem is that you can’t really kite on this class. Warlock mobility requires a ton of set up. It’s easy to make mistakes placing your circle and gateway. And if the fight moves far enough away from where you put all your gimmicks, you have to find the right time and place to reposition everything in the heat of combat. But let’s say you do everything perfectly. You have gained 2 bi-directional, fixed position mage blinks every 2 minutes and 1 monk transcendence. A melee spec covers that distance in 1 global. Sure, you can cheese their line of sight using a pillar if they are bad, but that means you are also doing nothing to them. Then you’re back to square one. Teleporting behind a pillar when you’re in danger will also very often place you out of your healer’s line of sight which is suicidal.

A double melee comp can lock you down literally forever. They waste your interrupt immunity from resolve by hard CC’ing you, after which they rotate kicks and there is nothing you can do. If you decide to eat their CC without a defensive, you die. Your own CC is unreliable, one-dimensional and gets griefed when your team mate accidentally cleaves one of the two melees standing on top of you. Your cooldowns are designed around very protracted burst windows where you need a ton of globals to take full advantage of what they offer, but you’d be lucky cast anything but DoTs and curses against melee. CC’ing the enemy healer and doing a proper burst rotation on an already decently damaged target is your only way to close a game and you just don’t get enough globals to do that most of the time.

I’m not saying Warlock as a whole is underpowered. It feels very strong against casters. Mages are easy prey. But it does feel like not a single developer played it against double melee.