Yet Another Warlock Nerf

Nothing to do with this article, yet cool nonetheless.

I’ve decided to change up the format a little. Instead of making this a three part series, this will be the final installment. Additionally, rather than listening off a bunch of strategies for specific comps (which you can get elsewhere) I’m going to talk about how to develop strategies. I think this type of analysis will be more useful.

Being able to come up with arena strategies on the fly is a valuable skill to have. After all, not every match you play will be against a cookie cutter comp. Essentially, you will be required to answer several questions to develop a proper strategy:

1. What abilities does my opponent have (specifically CC)?
2. How will they plan on winning the match? What tools do I have to stop this?
3. What do I need to do defensively and offensively to shift the match in my favor?

Let’s take a look at a few examples:

Warlock/Paladin vs. Priest/Rogue

Rogues are the bane of warlocks, and while Priest/Rogue has the upper hand in this match-up it is definitely doable. When determining how to beat a certain comp it is important to consider what CC your opponents have. Rogues have their full set of stuns (Cheap Shot, Kidney Shot, etc), sap, and crippling poison (sometimes also mind numbing). Priests have psychic scream (and divine hymn, but it is rarely used).

Once you’ve played against this comp you’ll notice they generally try to do the same thing over and over: fear the paladin and mana burn him. Despite the rogue being able to completely shutting you down, Priest/Rogue has to do this because paladins essentially have infinite mana and can easily heal through rogue damage. Given that OOMing your paladin is their path to victory it makes sense that you must go to great lengths to prevent this from happening. Thankfully, you have several tools that help.

1. Curse of Exhaustion – keep this up on the priest at all times. Psychic scream is a point blank area effect, which means that if the priest can’t get near your paladin he can’t use fear. CoEx won’t prevent your paladin being feared 100% of the time, but it does help.
2. Devour Magic – psychic scream is dispellable. If you leave your pet on the priest, then it should be in range to dispel the fear off your paladin.
3. Spell lock – use this as a last resort as spell lock can be very helpful in getting a kill.

There are other things to consider in this match-up. If the rogue gets a sap off on either you or the paladin it is highly likely that the game will end in their favor. To prevent this you should use your only tool against sap: the hellfire/soul link pet “bug” (more on this later). If this gets fixed in 3.1 (pleeeease no), then you will have to use Rain of Fire + pet on aggressive and try to get the rogue out of stealth. Using portal offensively to gain distance from the rogue is also very helpful (ie: portal then fear the rogue and apply DOTs).

Of course, at some point you are going to have to get a kill (you aren’t playing Druid/Hunter in TBC *rim shot*). Since rogues have so many interrupts and crippling poison, trying to get a kill on the priest is unlikely. Cloak of Shadows (or “cloak of skill”) is the rogue’s best tool against you, since it lets him totally wipe all of your DOTs off him every minute. In order to kill the rogue, therefore, you must play around cloak. This requires that you “force the cloak,” then try to kill the rogue during the minute when it cannot be used again. Forcing a rogue to cloak is not terribly difficult (just load him up with dots and then fear or stun the priest once the rogue is at 70-80%). The actual kill, however, is more difficult. In order to get the kill the rogue must be fully dotted and you must get the priest in a full CC chain. I try and follow these steps once cloak is down:

1. Get a fear on the priest and pull the rogue around a corner
2. Have your paladin start to DPS the rogue with you, but make sure he stays in LOS of the priest so he can HOJ when fear wears off
3. Spam Searing Pain on the rogue behind the corner (kicking this only locks out your fire tree)
4. Use cool downs like death coil for a little added burst, or spell lock on the priest to prevent healing

Rogues are fragile creatures and easily killed without Cloak of Skill. Before moving on to the next example, I would like to point out that in order for you to kill the rogue you must be patient and wait for the “stars to align.” What I mean by this is that you have to wait for many cool downs to line up. The priest must not be on DR for fear, cloak must be down, death coil usually must be up, hammer of justice must be up, nightfall procs help a lot, priest’s trinket must be cooling down, etc.

Druid/Rogue/Warlock vs. Hunter/Paladin/Priest

3v3 gets a lot more complicated that 2v2, so knowing what your class is good at becomes very important. Double healer teams like Hunter/Paladin/Priest are also incredibly annoying. Their goal will be to use Viper Sting and Mana Burn to OOM your healer while the hunter runs around facerolling. You can, however, take advantage of the fact that their DPS and burst potential is relatively low.
So what is your roll in this setup? Warlocks are a counter to hunters, so it will be your job to control the hunter for the majority of the match. Hunters can easily kite rogues, so having the rogue stick on the hunter is a bad idea. Druids can abolish poison and use travel form to easily LOS the priest, so Druid/Rogue/Warlock has the upper hand in this match-up.

In 3v3, my team usually has a quick discussion over vent about who will control which opponent and who the kill target will be. Once one target is down the game is essentially over. Against this team, the kill target should be the priest. If the rogue sits on the priest and stuns constantly a large amount of the priest’s healing will be mitigated.

As a warlock, it would be my responsibility to keep the hunter feared (especially when we go for the kill) and the paladin feared. It is critical to put UA up before you fear because both the priest and the paladin can dispel fear. CC must be coordinated so it doesn’t overlap (ie: use fear on a target that is on DR to cyclone, and vice versa).

Haunt should be kept on the priest, since that is the kill target, but both the hunter and paladin should also be dotted when possible. A great advantage locks have is keeping a high level of pressure on the opposing team while spamming fear to get them behind on healing.

I won’t say too much more about this match-up, other than that timing a proper CC chain because more difficult and more rewarding in a 3v3 setting. Since the Hunter/Paladin/Priest team has two healers the paladin must be chain CCed while the priest is dying. If the druid cyclones the paladin twice after fear fades, then that is easily a large enough window to kill the priest.
Hopefully these two examples show how to think about playing arena. There are a huge number of possible comps, so it is impossible to talk about everything. Finally, here is the promised list of tips and tricks.

Arena tips and tricks

1. Hellfire combat bug – once your pet is summoned and you have applied soul link use hellfire. This will damage your pet and put it into combat. Use a macro to apply a buff to your pet (this then puts you in combat and prevents you from getting sapped):

/target PETNAMEHERE
/cast Detect Invisibility
/targetlasttarget

Keep in mind combat only lasts for four or five seconds, so use this macro accordingly until you engage the enemy.

2. Will of the Forsaken works on Wyvern Sting – WotF breaks sleep. Simple, but many people forget this.
3. Totem stomper macro – a must against shaman teams that like to spam tremor totem:

/petattack
/petattack [target=OTHERTOTEMNAMEHERE]
/petattack [target=Healing Stream Totem]
/petattack [target=Mana]
/petattack [target=Tremor Totem]
/petattack [target=Grounding Totem]

4. Pregame buffs – make sure to use everything at your disposal. Detect Invisiblity and Fire Shield (from your imp) should be placed on everyone. Also put the Spellstone buff on your weapon pass out health stones to your partners (who invariably forget to use them).

That’s all for now! If you have any questions please ask.