I can beat Rogues.
In world of endless stunlocks, ruthless combos, and near-infinite escape mechanisms, Warlocks have found difficulty in defeating Rogues. I, however, maintain that I can defeat Rogues. Here is my secret:
A Godsend.
I know there are a fair number of Tailors out there who never bothered to change professions from early BC when FSW was absurdly good (and it still is). Most of these people—including myself—forgot about this glorious item. Three Netherweave Cloth will create two of these baddies for you. That’ll give you 12 nets per stack of cloth (with some cloth to spare). Stacks of cloth run fairly cheap on most servers (hovering on or about 3g each). I’ve been known to walk around with upwards of 50 of them because I like to use them every time the cooldown is up.
How to beat Rogues:
This process is fairly simple and self-explanatory:
- DoT up the Rogue (preferrably from a distance because I assume your Felhunter will be out).
- Maintain your distance.
- When the Rogue’s health gets low, he will usually pop his Cloak of Shadows (unless he wants to die, of course). Cloak will not remove the Netherweave Net debuff, because it’s not a magic effect.
- At this point, USE YOUR NETHERWEAVE NET.
- Count to four.
- Cast Fear. If timed correctly, your Fear will hit the Rogue just as Cloak of Shadows finishes. Now’s your chance to reapply your DoTs.
Make note that this doesn’t always work. Smart Rogues will Trinket/Vanish/Imp. Sprint/Shadowstep out of this. However, you’ve already created some distance between yourself and the Rogue, which is invaluable in such a PvP scenario. Also, you’ve still got Death Coil, if it’s not on cooldown; you may also have your PvP Trinket available, too, which can help you maintain some distance.
If the Rogue gets the jump on you, use your trinket to get away and jump-shot a net on them and work from there.
Also note that this process work on Warriors as well; in fact, Warriors are easier to kill because of their inability to remove DoTs.
Why it works:
The net has a beautiful effect that very few abilities in game have. This effect is what I call the “oh shit, nobody uses that” effect.
If you’re an intelligent reader, you’ve noticed already that the net effect lasts 3 seconds while Cloak lasts 5 seconds. You know that timing that Fear can be difficult because the Rogue will be heading in your direction because he will be free for about 2 seconds with the Cloak buff still on. However, the “oh shit” effect is what makes this work. For a split second, the Rogue will think “Who the hell uses that?” This is because no one—and I mean no one—uses Netherweave Nets. Honestly, I’m the only person I know who uses them. People laugh, and I come out on top. The sheer shock value in using nets makes them a priceless PvP ability.
Other uses:
- Keeping flag carriers in WSG and EOTS from capping their flags.
- Keeping enemies off AV/AB flags.
- Trapping mounted enemies.
- Interrupting Warrior/Druid charges (requires extreme timing).
- Interrupting Rogue sprints.
- Stopping escaping Slow Falling/Levitating Mages/Priests (my person favorite use).
- Stopping Hunter pets during Beastial Wrath keeping yourself out of range during The Beast Within.
- Stopping/Banishing Warlock pets.
- Keeping a Shaman away from his totems. Works nicely against Enchancement ones.
- Comboing nets with Curse of Exhaustion.
- There are countless uses in PvE (soloing/5-mans/grinding/etc.).
- Bear in mind, you can use nets to help other people (you can keep melee off of your healers!).
- The other obvious uses include keeping distance against all classes which is NEVER a bad thing for ranged classes.
The drawbacks:
- The net shares a cooldown with many other combat abilities. Namely, engineering goodies.
- There are a ton of ways to remove movement-imparing effects.
- There are a ton of ways to reduce the duration of movement-imparing effects.
- You need to be a Tailor (that’s given).
- It can be resisted.
- It does not work in arenas.
Other thoughts:
Of course, it seems like I’m sitting on a high horse here by claiming “I can beat Rogues.” However, I cannot beat Rogues 100% of the time. No one can beat any class 100% of the time. It’s safe to assume there are talented players in all classes whose reaction times are superb and can work around my nets. Nevertheless, the “oh shit” effect of the net is a supreme PvP advantage because it really sends the enemy for a loop.
I don’t claim to be the best Warlock PvPer out there. I do, however, maintain that I am a skilled PvPing Warlock (particularly in the Destruction tree; yet, that’s nearly unplayable in PvP these days because of resilience, spell pushback, and lack of Soul Link). Sure, some may claim that it’s easy to play as SL/SL. While to a certain extent that is true, but there are some characteristics that separate Flavor of the Month Warlocks from those who actually know what they’re doing.
On another note, resilience does help a ton for survivability. I do believe Horns explained this. I’m sitting on 319 resilience (that’s 131 resilience less that Horns recommends) at the moment in my fairly average gear (I made the switch from raiding, so I’m still sitting on a few PvE pieces) and I do socket for stamina. I don’t feel I need to go “all out” to get gear. I’m actually quite content. Go ahead, armory me.
Overall, PvPing to me means finding what works for me. I don’t care about other people’s specs and gear. In fact, I’m bothered when Warlocks tear each other’s gear/talents apart on the forums (hats off to the Warlock who PvPs in blues/greens and still enjoys the game). These things don’t need to be perfect (NOTE: perfect and optimal are different words) for PvP.
I do what what works and what makes me enjoy the game. In this case, netting people = enjoyment.
Edit: Updated drawbacks.
you might want to let your readers know that this item cannot be used in arenas, lest they get too excited at the prospect of perhaps being more than a stun-locked statue during a fight that includes a rogue.
You know, the thought never even crossed my mind to use those things. I cannot *wait* to try this out–and I completely agree with the “oh sh*t” factor. Catch a player off guard with some crazy item (the rocket launcher always gets a double take) and more often than not your opponent will hesitate for just a second, which could easily mean the difference between life and death in PvP.
“While to a certain extent that is true, but there are some characteristics that separate Flavor of the Month Warlocks from those who actually know what they’re doing.”
I started off my warlock (who was created solely to PvP) as destruction spec’d. I didn’t like going down to a warrior or rogue in 5 seconds so I went over to try out the SL/SL spec and immediately fell in love. I’ve been playing it for a few months now and have some decent experience with what does and doesn’t work against most classes but still have much to learn as far as what abilities to pop trinkets on, when to deathcoil, etc. What would you consider the characteristics to be that differentiate a fair weather lock from a seasoned one?
P.S. Am I the only person who has the Chicken Song stuck in their head while I kite people around a pillar with curse of exhaustion?
When I say “Flavor of the Month Warlocks” I refer to the Warlocks who pickup the class because they think it is comprised solely of DoT/Fear tactics. Moreover, FoTm Warlocks were the ones who rolled a Lock just as BC was released when Warlocks were fixed (and by “fixed” I mean overpowered) and had an Arms Warriors as pets (Felguard).
Benny Hill here
You claim to be a good pvper, and yet socket for stamina when your resilience is still very low.
…why do you not socket for resilience? It would increase your survivability dramatically.
The reasons I socketed for Stamina are the following:
- I made the gems leveling jewelcrafting.
- The PvP gear was rotting in my bank.
- I don’t want to spend the money to resocket this close to Wotlk.
- I enjoy having the highest HP in BGs.
Also, Mace, you make the assumption that a “good PvPer” has good gear (socket choices included). I make the case, however, that I am a good player based upon my skill. I’ve enjoyed monstrous success with my current PvP gear. Not everyone is epics is a “good PvPer.”
So I tried posting this earlier and it didn’t go through. I don’t know if posts have to be verified or something, but I’m trying again:
First, I never made the assumption that a good pvper has good gear. You misinterpreted my point:
A good pvper makes good decisions about his gear.
This means a good pvper will be able to determine which stats benefit him the most (in the case of warlocks it is resil > spell dmg > stam for 2v2).
Second, WotLK is still months away. You can buy +8 resil gems for like… 10g each? 20g? They are really cheap. One round of SSO dailies would probably be enough gold to resocket your whole gear set.
Third, you won’t have the highest hp in bgs with your current HP. So, even if it was your personal preference to socket poorly to achieve some arbitrary measure of hapiness you aren’t even achieving that. A S3/S4 geared lock will have more HP than you and won’t have a single stamina gem.
Let me put this into an analogy. There are two cars:
Car 1: Has a 10 gallon tank and can travel 1000 miles on a full tank.
Car 2: Has a 15 gallon tank and can travel 900 miles on a full tank.
You are purposely taking car 2 on the basis that “I can’t put as much gas into the tank of car 1″. How much gas you have (stamina) is irrelevent. Resilience will give you more mileage per point of stamina.
Really, what is the point of saying, “My hitpoints are awesome high” when someone with fewer hitpoints can last waaay longer than because they have more resilience?
Experiment in Bg’s incomming…
this will be as much fun as dispelling a Pallys Bubble as soon as he casts it..
the “oh shit” effect.
I find the same thing using polymorph turtle in BGs.
Even against Druids, there is this 2-5 second pause while people go..
“WoW look a turtle, isn’t it pretty… Mmmm where did I go?”
Very useful when kiting Striders at Vashjs
Your first comment got caught as spam for some unknown reason, sorry first time it happened so far.
Perhaps you misinterpreted me as well: I don’t care about my gear. WoW is something I play casually at this point; I simply don’t care enough to optimize my gear because I’m confidant in my ability to play. To quote myself,”PvPing to me means finding what works for me. I don’t care about other people’s specs and gear.”
In regards to the health thing: Okay, so I don’t always have the most health in a BG. The health thing was a joke on my part. I’ve noticed, however, that quite frequently I do have the most health in BGs, which is amusing to me because in AV it pretty much says to me: “We’ve lost this BG.”
I love those things! I also PVP as a Warlock and have been using the Netherweave Nets for almost a year now. I use them to keep any melee class at a distance but the most fun I have is using them to capture people trying to run through us on mounts in AV. They also work wonders on flag carriers in WSG.
I’m glad someone else FINALLY mentioned using these things as I’ve been preaching their gospel forever now.
I guess I have a hard time seeing where you are coming from. You say that you don’t care about gear, and yet you have many battleground pieces. If you truly do not care about gear why wear these at all? Why go to the effort of equipping any items if you don’t care about them?
The answer is that you do care. Perhaps not very much, but you do care. And since you must care a little, I still don’t see why you wouldn’t spend 5 minutes to properly socket your gear considering it took you hours upon hours of farming to get what pvp gear you do have.
You say you are a good pvper. The measure of a good pvper is not some nebulous, nonobjective term. The ability of a pvper is measured by his ability to kill his enemy. This can be done through skill, gear, and talents. You arbitrarily say you don’t care about one of those factors. You say that you don’t care about talents and yet run a perfect cookie-cutter SL/SL talent spec. See the contradiction?
Yay, im not alone. My priest is addicted to netherweave nets, i seem to use them everytime they are off cooldown. However they do have the negative effect of extremely annoying anyone who gets netted to the point that they ignore everyone else and perscute me. Ah well, its worth it.
The issue with these is the same with the engineering trinkets. You’re relying on having an advantage the rogue can get just as easily. Even /with/ these they can still catch up. Shadowstep works while netted and it doesn’t prevent attacks. It’s sort of funny watching ‘locks go on about how the engi bubble belt > rogues… then marginally lose to one without one, followed by being completely dominated by one with one.
Also destruction is hardly unplayable. It’s just a completely different playstyle to afflic/demo. Try SL+CoEX/conflagrate some time, too, instead of simple cookiecutter shadowfury - it’s quite effective provided you’re good.
I missed the part where I said I didn’t care about talents. Putting words in my mouth? I did, however, say that I don’t care about other people’s talents.
Furthermore, I also did say that I don’t care about my gear; you caught me there. Allow me to rephrase that: I don’t stress over gear. The pieces I have are the ones I picked up while PvPing in between raids. I didn’t go out of my way to get them or to optimize them.
I would argue that a good PvPer is not determined by his ability to kill his enemy. Where does this leave healers? Sometimes being a good PvPer means knowing when to back out of losing battles, halting your opponent’s combos, sacrificing yourself to help the team, and so on.
I do understand that resilience will get me better mileage out of my gear. I don’t feel I need to “do better” in PvP combat. I’m content with my successes with my current gear and spec.
You’re doing exactly what I hate, Mace: You are berating others because of their talents and gear. This is what turns forums into flamefests. I’m not you. I will never be you. My gear is not optimized. You can’t make me optimize it. I’m not you.
I am really perturbed when people develop “I’m an expert at WoW” syndrome (this goes hand-in-hand with the “I’m on the internet; I can be an asshole” syndrome). It seems to me that most people develop this. Why can’t we just worry about ourselves? Do you see me digging up your armory to nit-pick? This is what prevents forums from becoming more that “NO U” contests. Instead of seeing what others are doing, worry about yourself.
I play World of Warcraft purely for FUN. Did it ever occur to you that the purpose of this game is fun? I could not care less about about my character’s gear and talents so long as I am enjoying the game.
Let it be. If my enjoyment is getting in the way of your enjoyment, I apologize.
Hmm, I haven’t considered that spec. It sounds like it could work; I’ll give it a shot and get back to you.
Your guide only works versus rogues that aren’t very good.
1. DoT the rogue preferably from a distance can only work if the rogue was pulled out. You might say it is easy because you have perception, but then that is still only for human warlocks. Any rogue who understands pvp will not get pulled out by a warlock pet. The rogue will always get the opener.
2. Maintaining distance should be the easiest thing for a rogue to not let happen seeing as how there is crippling poison, which any rogue will shiv it instantly if it doesn’t auto-proc, and countless stuns.
3. The rogue’s health won’t get low. Yours will. A good rogue won’t cloak when his health is low. He will cloak after the first stunlock so you can’t death coil. And if you don’t death coil, the rogue will vanish, and then you are at probably around 50% HP (most likely lower) and the rogue is at probably 90% (pet damage) and stealthed again.
4. What rogue wouldn’t shadowstep out of netherweave nets to stun? Or even vanish? If the rogue cloaked he has no dots on him, so if he vanishes, your net is on cooldown and the rogue is going to open on you and start all over again.
This guide was made for warlocks who don’t have the gear to survive through large amount of burst and for warlocks who have only had real experience fighting rogues in battlegrounds, not arena. GG newb.
Of course this guide isn’t fool-proof. It doesn’t work 100% of the time. As I said before, no class can beat another class 100% of the time. I’m not always going to pull the Rogue out of stealth, and I am going to be jumped. This doesn’t diminish the usefulness of nets, however.
It’s clear to me, nlyav (Or should I say “Vayln”?), that you define real PvP by the Arena. However, BGs were around long before Arena. Regardless of the situation, there’s always going to be some scenario-based gimmick that will prevent PvP from being true PvP (see BG scenarios/pillars).
Also, very clever, Nick.
I’ve never lost to you
Okay, YAWN, I have never beat my friend Nick 1v1 since the introduction of resilience. He is absurdly good.
I misread what you said about talents (sorry, I thought you said you didn’t care about your talents).
However, you hit the nail on the head when you said:
“I play World of Warcraft for FUN.”
I can understand not wanting to nitpick over your gear; that’s fine. Furthermore, I’m not berating you for having a suboptimal setup. You seem to understand that what you’re running is suboptimal, but you are doing it anyways. That’s what I don’t get. You say you don’t want to fuss over your gear, yet you understand what you would need to do to make your setup better. So would it really be nitpicking to just do it?
You say you play WoW for fun. If you socket for resilience you will, with VERY minimal effort:
1) Decrease how much you die.
2) Increase the amount you “win”.
I guess that’s my point. It would take so little effort to do this, why not just do it?
I can understand not wanting to spend hours farming apexis shards and getting 25 people together just to get a meta gem that is slightly better than one you can AH in 5 seconds. I can understand not wanting to farm gold for hours on end so you can socket all your gear with epic gems. That, IMO, would be nitpicking and it’s not for everyone.
So, I guess I’ve said what I have to say. You seem like an intelligent person that is purposely making a bad decision to prove a point.
Would you honestly not enjoy being more successful? Would you be willing to spend 100g and 2 minutes of your time to find out?
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent.....Zxx0trothu
I found it highly effective v. rogues. Non-undead anyway. And yes, I have nets.
Essentially, you have a great deal of quick damage at your disposal, and whilst CoEX might be possibly the worst snare in the game, it’s still better than none. This spec will become significantly better in Wrath - you can nip the conflagrate stun talent as well as the new buffed CoEX; joy joy.
And against rogues, when you get time to cast anything that isn’t fear, immo->sburn->conflag. Hell, shadowburn whenever it’s off cooldown. Yeah, you eat shards like candy, but no power without cost etc etc.
Besides, conflag is poorly scripted so your latency affects how quick it blows after your immolate lands.
When you land a fear [hopefully against non-undead..else they're retarded, or have bad cooldown luck - who knows or cares, really] throw a shadowbolt then while it’s in midair immo->coex->conflag. that much damage WILL make them panic clos, and probably lolstep or sprint, so clearly that’s the best moment to net and if you can’t beat them from that position..something’s wrong.
It is mentioned in drawbacks that this does not work in Arena.
Learn to read noob.
What I’m trying to say, Mace, is that the state of my gear isn’t a super-important factor in my ability to have fun.
YES, you are right. If I were to resocket every stamina gem with +8 resilience, I would have 72 more resilience than I have now. YES, I would die less. YES, I would “win” more. YES, it would be fairly easy for me to do.
Here’s the truth, I hate what resilience has done to PvP. I much prefer Vanilla PvP to current PvP. Basing PvP combat around one stat is a bad idea to me. This is the reason for my resentment:
In Vanilla, you would raid, get gear, hit up the BGs and melt face. Now, you raid, hit up the BGs and get clobbered. Why should someone who AFKs/barely participates in BGs get better gear than someone who has devoted his schedule to a guild’s progress? Essentially, it’s a deep-seated resentment I’ve held since BC. That’s the truth.
I’m not satisfied with the current state of PvP. It’s a game of whoever has the most resilience. I like to prove that I don’t need to maximize my gear to have fun. THAT’S why I don’t go out of my way for PvP gear.
Well, I edited the post in response to his comment.
… the alternative to resilience is what used to happen, with naxx raidtards completely stomping superior players because their gear was flat out better. resilience is the one stat that means PvP is for PvP.
… as for the ‘afkers get gear’ logic - nobody wants those people getting gear. it’s a poor argument, because the system is there to reward people who DO PvP all the time as opposed to people who PvP just as much as say person X who raids and is of an equivalent skill level and, if there was no BG gear, would progress, whereas the PvPer would not.
that last paragraph was riddled with terrible english but you’ll figure it out.
Okay, I’ll admit the “AFKs in BGs” remark was a stretch–a poor one on my part.
As I discussed with Horns, I do see how resilience is good. I just wish Blizzard had gone about it a different way.
fair enough. anyway, ON WITH THE NEXT ARTICLE
Haha, Drazharan. Well put.
Fair enough. I don’t agree with your sentiments about PvP, but it is completely personal taste.
However, it sounds like you should have rolled a rogue. They get to use quite a bit of PvE gear in PvP.
The day I roll a Rogue is the day I die.
Here here
same here, i’ll just continue to get ganked by them
some caster used this on me, and idd i thought *who the hell uses that, but then again it didn’t save him
Comment by nlyav
2008-09-04 03:00:47
*He will cloak after the first stunlock so you can’t death coil. And if you don’t death coil, the rogue will vanish,*
cloak after ur done with ur stuns, aren’t u kinda fucked if the lock doesn’t use deathcoil while u pressed cloak right away after the stuns lol. why would the rogue vanish if u dont deathcoil ? he can just keep bashing on u, no need to vanish, use cloak wisely plz
I can understand not wanting to nitpick over your gear; that’s fine. Furthermore, I’m not berating you for having a suboptimal setup.
So, I guess I’ve said what I have to say. You seem like an intelligent person that is purposely making a bad decision to prove a point.
Hooray for backhanded compliments! …or something.
Seriously, why do people feel the need to tell others how to enjoy their time? I mean seriously, is how you gear your character wasting his $15 a month? This Mace fellow is exactly the kind of player I tend to avoid.
Don’t pay any mind, if you’re winning against Rogues or any other class a good amount of the time then you’re obviously doing something right. That’s regardless of someone spewing resil facts he read on some actually intelligent person’s theorycraft like he wrote the book.
Resilience to a degree is necessary, but a difference in resilience is a much smaller gap to cross than an difference in skill. Since this guy knows so much I suppose he can start his own blog and tell people what to do with their time there.
Keep up the good work Smatter, and don’t let folks like this get under your skin, it’s not worth it.
No did u forget rogues have clock of shadows ? … duh rogues beat locks