The State of Warlocks in 5v5 Arenas

Hi, I’m Fodus from Clan HeX, a horde 5v5 team on Lightning’s Blade noted for its unconventional class setup. I’ve been a member of Clan HeX for 5 years now: when we originally started as a competitive Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos DOTA clan on USEast. The core group of HeX players switched on WoW’s release with the goal of exploring the 5-man PvP experience. There’s been some new additions to the team since our days of roaming 5-mans, but the driving philosophy has remained the same: pushing the competitive nature of the game as far as it can go. As for me, I’ve played a warlock since release, starting with a human on Bleeding Hollow and ending up undead on LB. When I saw a comment on this website requesting a warlock article, I decided that I would try my hand at writing one.



In this article, I'm going to address the current situation of warlocks in 5v5. I'll talk a little about what a warlock brings to his team, why people assist train them, and what warlocks have been doing to compensate for that. These are just my thoughts based on my observations and experiences as a warlock in 5v5. Things are completely different for 2v2 and 3v3. Warlocks have been performing very well since the beginning of the season in 2v2 and 3v3 settings. It is only recently that people started seeing the impact that warlocks can have on a 5v5 battle.



In general, notable PvP warlocks rose to e-fame as Destruction—some of the best known being Drakedog, Maerad, and JingWuMing. (Yes, they are all Asian—I can't remember any NA/Oceanic locks of note...besides myself...lawl =P). This worked well because battleground teams used to focus fire healers in group fights. Hence, a warlock was mostly left alone to pew pew to his pleasure. Outside of that, a warlock could generally control his opponents enough through seduce and fear that he could do what he needed. But, while the old style of Destruction is perfectly fine in battlegrounds and smaller scale fights, it is really not the spec of choice for 5v5s as they are played on NA/Oceanic battlegroups; I left my first week of arena wondering what the hell I had done to piss everyone off.











Things every competitive player knows--why warlocks tank:



Warlocks of any spec are one of the best damage dealers in the game. If you've been raiding with any reasonably knowledgeable warlock lately, you've probably already noticed this. A 6/44/11 Demonology spec--or something very close to it--is very common among arena warlocks because it offers good survivability. This same spec can also top damage meters by large margins.



Damage aside, warlocks add control through Curse of Tongues and Fear. Tongues dramatically lowers heal per second. A healer only has a limited number of shields, prayers, and nature's swiftnesses before they must use casted heals. Tongues also makes interrupting those heals much easier. Like Mortal Strike or Wound Poison, CoT is a powerful focus fire tool.



Warlocks, mages, and druids are the only classes with spammable CC. This means that they can simply tab through enemy targets and fear, poly, or cyclone continuously to disrupt the other team's heals and damage. Because of the number of targets available, diminishing returns will reset before anyone goes immune to the CC. It is, in short, extremely annoying. Fear breaks and immunity run out much faster than you would think. I land fears on warriors all the time. Even if it's broken or dispelled, it still buys the focus fire target time to get away and/or get healed. Likewise, fearing healers prevents them from landing any crucial heals. Words can not describe the frustration that comes from CC-cycling. It's a great morale breaker.



Although warlocks have a high damage threshold and good control, they are not without their restrictions. They must basically be left alone in order to actually do anything. For any Demonology or Destruction spec, 75% of the warlock's potential damage comes from a casted nuke: Immolate + Incinerate + Conflagrate, Shadowbolt, or (because it bears mentioning) Seed of Corruption. Affliction warlocks can DoT on the run, but without casting Unstable Affliction, the damage dealt by those DoTs can be largely negated with dispels or even HoTs--granted, tying up a healer's time with dispelling is still somewhat valuable. The larger percent of their damage is mitigated with even minimal pressure. The same goes for fear spam. A warlock can't hurt you or control you if he is under your thumb.



Add up the previous points and then add in the fact that warlocks have very little in the way of escape. They have no instant-fear unless they are Affliction: uncommon for a 5v5 warlock. They have no Frost Nova or Blink, no Cone of Cold, no Ice Block, no travel form, no Nature's Grasp, etc. Their trinket is totally useless. In my experience, even if a mage is being focused, he can still drop several thousand damage on a whim. Aside from Backlash (frequent proc, but there are few destruction warlocks in 5v5) or Nightfall (uncommon proc) combining with Shadowburn (15 second CD), you're really not going to see a warlock do this.



In summary, warlocks are very dangerous to ignore, and very easy to focus. This is what everyone discovered in the first week or so of arena.











Things warlocks have done to compensate:



Over the weeks, warlocks have reacted to being focused in three main ways: 1) by changing their gear setup, 2) by changing their spec, and 3) by relying on their team to take pressure off of them.



The first trend is sacrificing damage gear for tanking gear: stacking stamina and resilience at the cost of other stats. A dead warlock does no damage. It doesn't matter if you're sporting 1100 damage if you're not living long enough to get a spell off. Realizing that damage dealers want nothing more than to bodily hurl themselves at us, we warlocks decided to put away our guns and strap on all the armor we could find. Instead of cloth, we are now wearing pillows. Many, many thick pillows. Don't laugh at me, I don't like dying. =(



Basically, some warlocks supplemented with greens in slots where PvP gear was not an option or was not available. High level “of Stamina” greens have point-for-point just as much, if not more, stamina than gladiator set pieces do when fully socketed with stamina gems; the difference is, they have nothing else. As gladiator gear becomes more available, these pieces will be phased out. Two crafted pieces--the Resolute Cape and the Unyielding Girdle--are also commonly worn in place of their PvP equivalents. Around 12,000 seems to be the median, unbuffed hit points for warlocks in their tanking gear. Resilience ranges widely from 100 to the upper 200s. You're going to see spell damage anywhere between 600 and 850. It varies according to one's tastes in stats.



Having lots of hit points is all well and good, but warlocks are still cloth. Since no warlock uses Demon Armor in PvP (with good reason), their armor reduction is about 9%. That is paper-thin. Thus, the second trend for 5v5 warlocks has been a gravitation towards demonology specs in order to bolster their meager defense. Here are the two I've seen that make the most sense: the aforementioned 6/44/11 and 17/33/11. I'm not going to link calculators because many of the filler points are endlessly debatable, but these two specs do warrant additional explanation. Here's the basic rundown for both:



6/44/11 Affliction: Imp. Corruption and a point in Lifetap for efficiency. Demonology: Fel Domination, Felguard, and all of the survivability talents. Destruction: Shadowburn.



17/33/11 Affliction: Imp. Corruption, some Suppression, Grim Reach (NOT nightfall). Demonology: Fel Domination, Soul Link, and 2 points in Demonic Resilience. Destruction: one point in Improved Firebolt for your imp! Pew pew! (j/k, Shadowburn).



Both are tanking specs, and the difference in terms of survivability between the two is negligible. With either, you can summon a Voidwalker for 10% physical reduction and a sacrifice shield for impressive damage absorption. I personally think Devour Magic and Spell Lock are too powerful to give up, but it's an option nonetheless.



Of the two, 6/44/11 is going to do more damage. The Felguard outputs some very impressive numbers on his own, should you use him. You also get significant bonuses in both crit rating and spell damage. That said, a warlock has two jobs.



For a warlock who values his ability to control more than his damage output, 17/33/11 is very solid. You want your curses, fears, and death coils to land every time you cast them. A timely resist means the difference between a heal that saves someone and a heal that doesn't. This problem is compounded by the fact that many people have talents that increase their resistance to fear and at least 70 shadow resistance from priest buffs. That is the purpose of Suppression—to minimize the effect those resistances have on you. Grim Reach cuts down time you would otherwise spend running towards people. Healers often stand a good distance away from their targets and also run around to avoid being countered. You want to reach them as soon as possible. A 20 yard range on fear is not very forgiving—the extra 4 yards you get from Reach is all the difference in the world.



Note, 6/44/11 is vastly more popular. Why? It works in PvE. You won't need to respec twice a week just to raid. I can tell you very plainly that 17/33/11 will do no damage in raids whatsoever compared to 6/44/11 or any real raid DPS spec. Everyone will laugh at you and your friends will shun you...*sniff* In the end, your play style and team setup are going to determine how you spec.











Things your team can do and some closing remarks:



So far, I've talked about the things that warlocks can do for themselves in order to have a fighting chance. All of that is, of course, completely meaningless without the support of your team. It doesn't matter what your gear is or what spec you have. If you have a rogue and/or a warrior on you, you are not casting anything. That's the nature of the warlock class. For those times, you have to rely on your teammates to help you help them. They can do this in many different ways, ranging from defensive to offensive support.



By defensive support, I mean doing things that actively keep you alive. Heals are only one aspect of this. Warlocks are a big investment that require everyone's cooperation; they simply aren't capable of defending themselves. Mages should nova and sheep people off of the warlock, rogues should stun and blind them, warriors should hamstring them, priests should fear them, and so on. Their primary objective shouldn't be defending you, but everyone needs to pause what they are doing and help out once in a while to ensure that your healers can actually keep you alive. For his part, the warlock should be kiting as well as possible while simultaneously handling curses, crowd control, and damage. He also needs to be very mindful of line-of-sighting his healers: humongous no-no.



Number one piece of advice: for the love of all that is good in this world, do yourself a favor and play with a paladin. You'd think warlocks and paladins would hate each other what with demons and holy magic not getting along. Wrong. You love them. You buy them gifts on Valentine's and make them happy however you can because they are the only thing keeping you from being entirely consumed by the warrior hacking at your back. BoP and BoF both serve to get you out of immediate danger and, more importantly, allow you to get spells off. Paladins let you do your job. I say with some confidence that a warlock without a paladin is no where near as effective as a warlock with one.



(Side note: When you are focused, you are often going to be dispelled until there are no buffs on you. If at all possible, spend the 500 mana to rebuff Fel Armor. You won't usually experience a second dispel volley. The healing bonus is absolutely critical for countering MS and wound poison. If it's dispelled again, rebuff again. Even in the worst-case-scenario, it's better that their priest or shaman is dispelling you rather than healing or nuking.)



There are many shades to offensive support as well. The idea is that when you pressure a damage dealer they switch from trying to do damage to trying to stay alive. For example, stick a warrior on a rogue trying to kill a warlock, and you can be sure that the rogue is going to quit worrying so much about the warlock. If the warlock is able to gain distance, the rogue is never going to catch up again until the warrior stops. While the other team is distracted with killing you, your own team can take the opportunity to drop damage on an unsuspecting target and relieve pressure from you at the same time. Your team becomes a virtual wall of swords. I have only seen one successful Destruction warlock in 5v5. He was able to sit back in relative comfort and spam nukes because he had two warriors rushing out in front of him. The thought of navigating the gauntlet between two big, red warriors using whirlwind is discouraging to say the least. You need to force the other team to sacrifice whenever they come after you; even if you do die, they should lose someone in the process.



So, I've talked about what's been happening to warlocks and how they've adapted thus far. That said, this article is just theory and some helpful hints. I'm relating general trends among warlocks on top teams. I'm not trying to present these as advanced tactics or keys to success. There are a lot different ways to do this. In the end, execution is as important as theory. Good luck, warlocks.