Any active Warlock teams out there?

[Firstcow]

I'm curious to see if there are any active 4 lock + healer teams out there who arena. I don't care if you're high rated or not, I just want to hear what you think about this comp. To me the most attractive thing about this team is the spammable CC: fear and seduce. It's true they have DR, but after 15 seconds you can spam it again 3 times in a row.

With good macros you can keep 2 players out of the game for a pretty long time. If you can keep 2 players out for 10 seconds or so, it's probably enough to kill one of the other 3. And if those 2 reach immunity too fast, you can switch to spam CC on another 2 players, and burn down the other ones.

What do you guys think? Is it worth burning 3 months of grind to gear up a lock team to see if this has any chances to work? I'm not talking about high rated arena, just 1800.

[Littleburst]

I'm curious to see if there are any active 4 lock + healer teams out there who arena. I don't care if you're high rated or not, I just want to hear what you think about this comp. To me the most attractive thing about this team is the spammable CC: fear and seduce. It's true they have DR, but after 15 seconds you can spam it again 3 times in a row.

With good macros you can keep 2 players out of the game for a pretty long time. If you can keep 2 players out for 10 seconds or so, it's probably enough to kill one of the other 3. And if those 2 reach immunity too fast, you can switch to spam CC on another 2 players, and burn down the other ones.

What do you guys think? Is it worth burning 3 months of grind to gear up a lock team to see if this has any chances to work? I'm not talking about high rated arena, just 1800.

Aoe silence + fear + bladestorm = bad.

No it's not worth it. Gl getting a rating above 1,5k.

[Powerwar]

I run 5 locks. They are lvl 75 at the moment.

So far, your strategy will fail.
If you have seduce on autocast your pets will go berserk and chain seduce everything on sight. The problem is that they reseduce too fast and people get immune about 2 seconds after trinketing the first seduce. If you don't autocast sseduce, then the micromanagement is crazy and practically impossible.

If you use succubus I assume you plan to spec destruction. That spec is terrible for warlocks boxing because it converts you into a sitting turret waiting to be pwned. Remember that locks spells that have cast time take 2 seconds to cast even when talented.

I am running demonology + affliction spec and it's like commanding a squad of death and destruction.
When swarmed by melee popping demo form and immolation aura the only ones that are left alive after 3 seconds are the paladins with bubble.
When "swarmed" by ranged, I send the felguards to kill them for fun and profit.

Having 2 instacast dots on the run (curse and corruption) makes 10 dots per person that comes in range... even resto druids die fast because they are unable to outheal all.
If things go bad I just cast seed of corruption x 5 and people start to die. Seed of corruption detonates almost instantly on landing when you cast 5 of it, so it just becomes a very nice AOE with cast time.

In any case, I see possible problems with rogues and ret paladins using this setup, specially the ones that are relatively good at pvp. If you pop demon form against a ret paladin that knows what he is doing, chances are that he will wipe all or almost all of your team... good thing is that most of them are clueless and don't know what half of their paladin abilities do :)

Bladestorming warriors are not a problem. I just see them as walking healing pots because 5 death coils kill everything else and a warlocks or two don't get healed.

Also just for fun, in WSG take the flag carrier and get him 40 seconds feared is really nice. Just fear, fear, fear, death coil, again 4 more times (15 seconds and fear DR has gone), fear, fear, fear ... then dot him and kill him. I know it's evil, but it's so fun to do that I just can't resist when I have a chance to do that :)

[Ualaa]

4x Warlocks, with someone else playing the healer, is one of Asonimie's teams.

He recommended Demonology or Destruction while gearing up.
But his goal was an Affliction spec, with the idea of killing someone quickly from dot damage in the time a healer is feared. I believe he quoted 2200 spell power, as the point to switch back to Affliction.

Affliction does not depend on facing for landing dots.
Although S.Bolt/Incinerate/Drains do.
But the team is a lot less vulnerable to fear then most.

And with Haunt, Siphon Life, assorted drains etc.
You have a lot of passive healing.
Chances are, as affliction you run with Felhounds, which are fun against casters, and have a bit of health so Soul Link is an option.

You have 4x AoE fear, 4x single fear, 4x death coil for space if you want it.
Plus whatever tricks your healer brings.



I've got 4x Affliction + 1x Discipline as a low level team.
Aside from heirloom shoulders and robes, their gear is crap.
But they're just 22nd; with more of their toys they'll be a stronger team.

Pretty dominant in WSG, until they run out of mana.. which is fairly fast... still easily kill 8-10 opponents before mana is an issue, and my girls start to fall.
And survivability was rather low, with split teams which suck.
Down the road, with the option to Hellfire or AV-Trinket to regroup a team will help a ton.

[Boylston]

There is a Priest+4xWarlock team in my battelgroup that I have faced a few times in both arena and in the battlegrounds. His warlocks are all named after the Stooges, Lahry, Mohe, Curlhy, Shemph, IIRC. I'm not positive whether he's 5-boxing or has a partner (if I had to guess, he's 5-boxing).

The two times we've faced off in a BG situation were both EotS BGs, and my side handily owned theirs. I was able to pick apart his team at will if needed, although I generally just rotated through other nodes to make sure we held 3 towers at all times. The key for me against him in the BG setting was to avoid running in from max range slowly and giving him time to apply DoTs. Cleanse helped dramatically as well. Death Grip + Snares was really tough on him, once I trinketed a fear, I could just mutilate his poor clothies with my melee team.

In arena, I remember losing one of our early fights together, but I think I've won since I acquired just a little bit of gear. I have a pretty horrible arena record right now, so it's notable that this multiboxing comp is actually one where I have had at least a success or two. I'd much rather face it than a "normal" team, if that tells you anything...

[Firstcow]

I run 5 locks. They are lvl 75 at the moment.

So far, your strategy will fail.
If you have seduce on autocast your pets will go berserk and chain seduce everything on sight. The problem is that they reseduce too fast and people get immune about 2 seconds after trinketing the first seduce. If you don't autocast sseduce, then the micromanagement is crazy and practically impossible.

If you use succubus I assume you plan to spec destruction. That spec is terrible for warlocks boxing because it converts you into a sitting turret waiting to be pwned. Remember that locks spells that have cast time take 2 seconds to cast even when talented.

I am running demonology + affliction spec and it's like commanding a squad of death and destruction.
When swarmed by melee popping demo form and immolation aura the only ones that are left alive after 3 seconds are the paladins with bubble.
When "swarmed" by ranged, I send the felguards to kill them for fun and profit.

Having 2 instacast dots on the run (curse and corruption) makes 10 dots per person that comes in range... even resto druids die fast because they are unable to outheal all.
If things go bad I just cast seed of corruption x 5 and people start to die. Seed of corruption detonates almost instantly on landing when you cast 5 of it, so it just becomes a very nice AOE with cast time.

In any case, I see possible problems with rogues and ret paladins using this setup, specially the ones that are relatively good at pvp. If you pop demon form against a ret paladin that knows what he is doing, chances are that he will wipe all or almost all of your team... good thing is that most of them are clueless and don't know what half of their paladin abilities do :)

Bladestorming warriors are not a problem. I just see them as walking healing pots because 5 death coils kill everything else and a warlocks or two don't get healed.

Also just for fun, in WSG take the flag carrier and get him 40 seconds feared is really nice. Just fear, fear, fear, death coil, again 4 more times (15 seconds and fear DR has gone), fear, fear, fear ... then dot him and kill him. I know it's evil, but it's so fun to do that I just can't resist when I have a chance to do that :)

I'm pretty sure things change dramatically at lvl 80 in full wrathful/relentless gear. 5 deathcoils probably won't kill even the guy with the lowest HP on the opposing team.

But it sounds interesting going demo to prevent melees from swarming you.

I guess I'll wait for the Paladin class review to decide if I'm going to raise my lock team or not.

[Boylston]

Melees swarm you no matter what. Don't be fooled.

[Firstcow]

Melees swarm you no matter what. Don't be fooled.

Enough with the crankiness. Obviously they swarm you, my point was if you go demo, when they swarm you you have serious pressure on them being demo, with fire and forget aoe, and be able to still focus on ranged.

[Boylston]

But it sounds interesting going demo to prevent melees from swarming you.


Obviously they swarm you, my point was if you go demo, when they swarm you you have serious pressure on them being demo, with fire and forget aoe, and be able to still focus on ranged.

Wait, I'm confused. Which one is it?

[Firstcow]

Wait, I'm confused. Which one is it?

My bad, I didn't realize you were just trolling. Now I get it...

[Ualaa]

Melee swarming you will occur, because otherwise their toons are useless.
But when they do, Immolation Aura from demon form puts pressure on their healers.
And you can still DPS ranged, forcing healers to divide their healing resources.

[Fomeny]

A quick note from my side:

Any Paladin would use his "stun demon/undead"-skill and deal a good amount of damage with it while stunning you in demon form.

The only way I imagine a warlock team working would be with 3x Demo + Affliction + Separate Healer. Get as much spellpower as possible on the demons and apply dots, that deal heavy damage even though they don't crit. UA to protect the dots.

[Mosg2]

They mentioned specifically in the blue post regarding Warlocks that all anti-Demon CC and damage stuff would no longer affect a Metamorphosed Warlock.

[Ualaa]

A lot of people are in the mindset of arena = the only pvp that counts.
And in the current WotLK game, that's true for higher end gear, but there still are BG's.

An ideal team is one which will excel in both arena against five dedicated opponents and in battleground situations against less coordinated opposition, but quite possibly in superior numbers to your group of five.

I'd tend to think a group of Warlocks or possibly 4x with a healer toon, would be more powerful in the battleground scenario then the arena.

[Fomeny]

A lot of people are in the mindset of arena = the only pvp that counts.


True, I actually had to read the first post again since I was automatically thinking about arena ^^... Well, the OP asked about arena ;)

[Boylston]

At the end of the day, my biggest concern with warlocks as a team is that they are a cloth wearing class. You're going to take two kinds of damage in this game, magic and physical. With a few minor exceptions, everyone has pretty much the same degree of defense to magical damage, but physical resistance is alltogether different.

Multi-shammies have always been nice because mail+shield gives darn good protection against physical attacks, same now with the popular DK+Rets combo. Being a clothie makes you vulnerable to physical damage.

I watched a single bladestorming warrior decimate the multi-warlock team that run in my battlegroup. It wasn't pretty. As I mentioned earlier, it was a piece of cake for me to DG one warlock and kill it in 2 GCDs, then snare another and do the same.

Personally, I think an all warlock team sounds like a fun, fun time. I've been tempted to roll one myself in the past. I just fear that they're not robust enough to deal with the massive amounts of physical damage that other classes can easily put out. These same classes all have tools to close on you (charge, DG, stealth, etc etc) before you can kill them. You just can't keep foes at range... A lesson I learned painfully with hunters.

[suprafro]

A lot of people are in the mindset of arena = the only pvp that counts.
And in the current WotLK game, that's true for higher end gear, but there still are BG's.

An ideal team is one which will excel in both arena against five dedicated opponents and in battleground situations against less coordinated opposition, but quite possibly in superior numbers to your group of five.

I'd tend to think a group of Warlocks or possibly 4x with a healer toon, would be more powerful in the battleground scenario then the arena.

I think many people here are interested in teams which will be viable all forms on competitive PVP venues in the next expansion be it Arenas, Rated BGs, or what have you. Unfortunately, BGs currently are not competitive at all and I think it would be very unwise to assume what works today in BGs, will work in the rated BGs of tomarrow.

[Ualaa]

I don't see the strategy in battlegrounds changing much.
Possibly the calibre of play will increase, and the gearing of toons.
But the win conditions are the same.

[Mosg2]

I agree with Ualaa--I don't foresee a huge shift in the strategy for BG's. People might play smarter and harder (and potentially there might be more people afk'ing) but the basic strats that have been devised are sound.

[Flekkie]

I was pondering a lock team exclusively for battlegrounds. Mainly because I haven't PvP'd before, and affliction [sorry: demo/affl] sounded pretty easy - running around and dotting.

The mele vulnerability sounds tricky, but would curse of exhaustion, teleport or hellfire help counter this? Can't locks do a horror thingy which isn't trinketable? Shouldn't that help stop whirly warriors? Sorry, I'm too casual these days to know all this stuff off the bat. :( I take it a 5 x shammy team would be better because of the mail/shield? But it's so cliché..

I wondered would adding a healer be better than 5 x lock? Priests sound too squishy (but would allow 5 x WOTF and hellfire+nova [oops, HF will not cause damage in cata]), but I was wondering what people who know think of shammy + 4 locks (all orc)? eg Is ankh/soul stone used much in PvP? Or is being able to teleport x 5 more important than heals + totems?

Sorry, Firstcow, its a slight hijack but there is so much relevant discussion already on this thread..

[5fingersofdoom]

I ran 2 teams of warlocks best combination I found for BG was a strong demonology/affliction spec running felguards.
Although I played in AV alot and found frost mages and the standard carpetbombing melee swarm too much for clothies,and speculate pure affliction is too vulnerable to toons being harassed and picked off by rogues in transit.
Still I never reached 80 with them so it could change things somewhat.
Just my 2 pennies worth.:)

[Domineek]

Its been a while since I posted, but since I've been pvp'ing more lately with my warlock group, I figured I'd reply. Currently I'm 5x demo, so no healer in arena and whatever healer(s) are around when I'm in battlegrounds. While affliction does have passive healing, I found demo has given more survivability. Having felguards to charge/stun healers or melee dps out the gate, immolation aura to push up the healing required from the opposing team, and metamorphisis for the added bonus to armor in demon form helps on melee attacks. Chain fear, death coil, and howl of terror is great, but thats available in any spec. Having some pvp gear helps surviving too. :D

[Multibocks]

Let us know your progress, I see you are at 1050 now.

[mikekim]

I run a holy trinity group for PVE / PVP. they seem to be doing ok so far.

Prot / Ret Pally
3x Destro Locks
Disc / Shadow Priest.

the locks are at 70, just about to ding 71. when that happens I will try all five in an AV group.
the three Locks on their own were doing some serious damage (averaging 100+ kills per game) in the three Av games I played the other day.