Tips for pvp vs mage in a solo situation

[pasur]

imo u really shouldn't be using fear too often as alliance warlock

the main reason people roll alliance warlock is to be SM/ Ruin lock while utilizing the very strong vanilla racial, perception.

also it sounds like u guys are using death coil at long range which is very bad.

it has a slow projectile speed and it's very easy to vanish / iceblock / shadow reflector, make sure to use it at close proximity.

mages should be pretty easy, to be honest.

I'm using Death Coil in the following situations:
- Get a rogue or warrior off me who managed to get an opener to buy some time to apply Fear and hope that their racial and/or trinket is on cooldown.
- Stop flag runner for a second before I can apply CoEx and/or Fear.
- In "oh shit" situations where I need the burst or some time to breath in close encounters.

Still, to be back on topic, even somewhat decently geared mages can faceroll me as well in most of the cases because I simply cannot last long enough to actually outlast them in a fight by getting them to a point when they are out of mana.

Even if I use most/all my cooldowns (Shadowburn, Deathcoil, Healtshone) have only a slim rate of success. If only one of them is not available while engaging it's pretty much a lost cause already.

Don't get me wrong, my aim is not trying to get excuses why I'm getting outplayed by others, instread I'm striving to focus on where I can improve my game to have a higher success rate in these kind of situations and "how to warlock" in general.

You are simply playing PvP Alliance Warlock incorrectly.

As I've said, the reason there are so many Human warlocks is because of sm / ruin + Perception. You really shouldn't spec anything else as Alliance Lock. Don't apply fear.

Rogues and Mages should be your easiest opponents. The only time you need fear is to interrupt spells.

A sm / ruin lock will have a very large amount of HP, Voidwalker, and Free Action Potions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhjsicCeVPw

The only example I could find, this lock doesn't use Free Action Potions, and even gets his Death Coil reflected.

Against mages you should not be getting counter spelled, you should be dotting and cursing. You can cast a spell while your opponent is terrified from your Death Coil.

[Numi]

You are simply playing PvP Alliance Warlock incorrectly.

As I've said, the reason there are so many Human warlocks is because of sm / ruin + Perception. You really shouldn't spec anything else as Alliance Lock. Don't apply fear.

Bullshit, SL / SB is still a very powefull spec when played properly and you're no less of a threat than a horde warlock playing the same spec.

However I do agree you should have an easy time vs mages, it's relatively easy to lock them in fear assuming you manage to fake cast their counterspell, which shouldn't be to hard on Nostalrius because of the delay. Not sure how the matchup changed since they fucked up felhunter silence, but it should still be relatively easy, just lock their main school / arcane, then lock them in fear.

[Xasthur]

You are simply playing PvP Alliance Warlock incorrectly.

As I've said, the reason there are so many Human warlocks is because of sm / ruin + Perception. You really shouldn't spec anything else as Alliance Lock. Don't apply fear.

Rogues and Mages should be your easiest opponents. The only time you need fear is to interrupt spells.

A sm / ruin lock will have a very large amount of HP, Voidwalker, and Free Action Potions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhjsicCeVPw

The only example I could find, this lock doesn't use Free Action Potions, and even gets his Death Coil reflected.

Against mages you should not be getting counter spelled, you should be dotting and cursing. You can cast a spell while your opponent is terrified from your Death Coil.

I'm playing SM/Ruin indeed. I'm mostly applying fear when it comes to group combat to keep the horde healers off just until my team can snipe a few kills making the midfield battle turn in our favour by outnumbering the opponents.

Can you define what a large amount of HP means? I'm sitting at 3.6k unbuffed at the moment and I do find that way far off the point of feeling safe against opponents who are outgearing me.

Why the VW though? Sacrifice for the bubble? I have always found my Felhunter to be more useful when it comes to the benefit of the team. Devouring sheeped status off our healers our yourself when you are in a 1on1 against a mage for example is a really good feature.

If I'm just dotting and cursing against mages, I'm not even going to get to the point that they feel unsafe, they can pretty much burn me to death in just a matter of seconds with their burst and 1k+ frost bolts or just by spamming arcane explosion or whatever floats their boat.

[Numi]

Why the VW though? Sacrifice for the bubble? I have always found my Felhunter to be more useful when it comes to the benefit of the team. Devouring sheeped status off our healers our yourself when you are in a 1on1 against a mage for example is a really good feature.

If I'm just dotting and cursing against mages, I'm not even going to get to the point that they feel unsafe, they can pretty much burn me to death in just a matter of seconds with their burst and 1k+ frost bolts or just by spamming arcane explosion or whatever floats their boat.

You should not be running voidwalker in any BG ever, felhunter is OP as fk and voidwalker is very underwhelming. Only scenario you run voidwalker is when you know you'll face a rogue / warrior solo who will get the jump on you. Any team based PvP should always be done with felhunter.

I think your gear is simply the issue, frostbolt does roughly the same amount of damage as shadow bolt, so if you're considering 1k frostbolts an issue, it's most likely you're not putting out comparative damage.

I've got ~300 spelldamage and almost 5k hp in my PvP gear, meaning I can not only tank mages for a lot longer, I also deal a lot more damage to them while I do so. Purging ice barrier of mages is also something you should practice on doing if you're consistently struggling with mages, as that's one of their many defenses.

[Xasthur]

You should not be running voidwalker in any BG ever, felhunter is OP as fk and voidwalker is very underwhelming. Only scenario you run voidwalker is when you know you'll face a rogue / warrior solo who will get the jump on you. Any team based PvP should always be done with felhunter.

I think your gear is simply the issue, frostbolt does roughly the same amount of damage as shadow bolt, so if you're considering 1k frostbolts an issue, it's most likely you're not putting out comparative damage.

I've got ~300 spelldamage and almost 5k hp in my PvP gear, meaning I can not only tank mages for a lot longer, I also deal a lot more damage to them while I do so. Purging ice barrier of mages is also something you should practice on doing if you're consistently struggling with mages, as that's one of their many defenses.

I didn't understand the point in using VW either, have always been using the Felhunter.

Also the gear part does indeed explain a lot with ~150 shadow spell damage and 3.6k HP in my PvP set.

Purging the ice barrier is something I didn't think of so far (as I have mentioned I'm completely new to playing a warlock and PvP in general as well), have always considered devour to be a defensive spell and didn't use it for offensive purposes. Thanks!

[Ravni]

Mages are vastly stronger at close-to-mid range than locks, but outside of 30 yards you have an enormous advantage over them. No counterspells, sheeps, fireblasts, blastwave/CoC, frost nova shatter combos, etc - all their good stuff is 15-30 yard range, whereas most of your good stuff casts out to 36.

So it might sound a bit counterintuitive, but the main thing is to try and kite mages at max range (hunters do the same). Send in your felhunter to attack with autocast off, devour magic their barriers, corruption, siphon life all while maintaining range at 36 yards, and spam curse of exhaustion the whole time while you are running away. Mages can of course decurse, but you can keep spamming CoEx for very little mana, and each time they trade a CoEx-decurse GCD with you at max range you win because they lose a little bit of range (even if its only a yard or two), and they are taking constant dot/pet damage, plus potential nightfall instant shadowbolts, and you are not taking any damage.

Try to save your spell lock for if they blink in towards you to cast a frost bolt. If the mage just tries to cast a quick non-instant spell at long range (say, a rank-1 frostbolt to snare), you just cast immolate on them in return and spell lock them mid-cast. Always remember you have a 6yard range advantage on spell lock vs the 30yards on counterspell.

Try to save your spellstone to clear a frostbolt snare (or esp a frost nova) & save deathcoil in case you fuck up and they get in close somehow. If they are dumb and try to just hard nuke you at long range with a max rank frostbolt/fireball, you just immediately return cast with a fucking soul fire and then spell lock them 2 seconds in. That's basically guaranteed to waste an iceblock if its not down already, or win you the fight if it is. Try not to ever expose your shadow school to a counterspell, only challenge/bait them into locking out your fire school (not that soul fire is even really a bait - a crit is perfectly capable of 1-shotting a mage with barrier down).

Most of this advice also applies to the SM-ruin vs SL-shadowburn matchup too, you can exploit the hell out of your 30-36 yard range advantage and they can't even decurse the CoEx. The grim reach-SL builds can't be beat 1v1 so just use CoEx to run away from them.

[pasur]

You are simply playing PvP Alliance Warlock incorrectly.

As I've said, the reason there are so many Human warlocks is because of sm / ruin + Perception. You really shouldn't spec anything else as Alliance Lock. Don't apply fear.

Bullshit, SL / SB is still a very powefull spec when played properly and you're no less of a threat than a horde warlock playing the same spec.

50+ points of stealth detection for 20 seconds and FAP > orc = gnome >>> undead

You can argue there are a lot less rogues on Horde than Alliance. (PVP Server)

However, I don't know if that's true on the PvE server as Horde rogues get Windfury totem for raids.

You are simply playing PvP Alliance Warlock incorrectly.

As I've said, the reason there are so many Human warlocks is because of sm / ruin + Perception. You really shouldn't spec anything else as Alliance Lock. Don't apply fear.

Rogues and Mages should be your easiest opponents. The only time you need fear is to interrupt spells.

A sm / ruin lock will have a very large amount of HP, Voidwalker, and Free Action Potions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhjsicCeVPw

The only example I could find, this lock doesn't use Free Action Potions, and even gets his Death Coil reflected.

Against mages you should not be getting counter spelled, you should be dotting and cursing. You can cast a spell while your opponent is terrified from your Death Coil.

I'm playing SM/Ruin indeed. I'm mostly applying fear when it comes to group combat to keep the horde healers off just until my team can snipe a few kills making the midfield battle turn in our favour by outnumbering the opponents.

Can you define what a large amount of HP means? I'm sitting at 3.6k unbuffed at the moment and I do find that way far off the point of feeling safe against opponents who are outgearing me.

Why the VW though? Sacrifice for the bubble? I have always found my Felhunter to be more useful when it comes to the benefit of the team. Devouring sheeped status off our healers our yourself when you are in a 1on1 against a mage for example is a really good feature.

If I'm just dotting and cursing against mages, I'm not even going to get to the point that they feel unsafe, they can pretty much burn me to death in just a matter of seconds with their burst and 1k+ frost bolts or just by spamming arcane explosion or whatever floats their boat.

VW is more for solo wpvp. Since you are on the PvE server this doesn't apply to you, in BG you have teammates to cover and peel for you.

You don't have enough health, I would aim for at least 5 k. All mages can really do against you is CS / Iceblock debuffs / Shadow Reflector your Deathcoil / and cast instant spells if you play correctly.

If you get dazed by Goblin Rocket Helmet make your pet interrupt / attack them.

Since you said you're new to Warlock PvP--just wanna get this out of the way--make sure you don't backpedal or keyboard turn.

50 % movement speed decrease = bad.

[Xasthur]

VW is more for solo wpvp. Since you are on the PvE server this doesn't apply to you, in BG you have teammates to cover and peel for you.

You don't have enough health, I would aim for at least 5 k. All mages can really do against you is CS / Iceblock debuffs / Shadow Reflector your Deathcoil / and cast instant spells if you play correctly.

If you get dazed by Goblin Rocket Helmet make your pet interrupt / attack them.

Since you said you're new to Warlock PvP--just wanna get this out of the way--make sure you don't backpedal or keyboard turn.

50 % movement speed decrease = bad.

I see other Warlocks around 4k-4.5k HP total (who already have the rank 7/8 PvP rares and some parts of the T1/T2 sets) which I'm still some way off. Also, SM/Ruin has no space for the 15% extra HP from talents unfortunately. I'm hopefully hitting rank 7 in a week or two and getting some librams done I should be around 4.2k which is already a lot better than what I have currently.

Backpedaling and keyboard turning is a bad thing even when tanking raids, so I have that one covered already, haha.

[Darkwinjax]

Most of the advice given here is okay vs shit mages

Also if you think that 25% stun resist is worse than perception you are a fucking mongoloid, even escape artist is better than perception.

Improved Vanish > paranoia + perception.

I'm really sorry you face shit rogues who can't prevanish to get an opener.

[pasur]

Most of the advice given here is okay vs shit mages

Also if you think that 25% stun resist is worse than perception you are a fucking mongoloid, even escape artist is better than perception.

Improved Vanish > paranoia + perception.

I'm really sorry you face shit rogues who can't prevanish to get an opener.

of course they can vanish, but they lost a vanish because of perception, fap > 25 % chance to resist 1 stun, mongoloid stay on the pvp forums plz.