Alliance Warlock in PvP

Re: Alliance Warlock in PvP

by diogenes » Mon Nov 09, 2015 2:36 am

Aethelwulf wrote:Don't put words in my mouth to make your position seem more reasonable.


I'm going to post an exact exact quote from your previous post with respect to what you say you're "not claiming." You said:

I didn't say Horde is infinitely more powerful, just that they are far better tailored to shutting down Warlocks than the Alliance. I didn't say losing out on part of your DoT damage is negligible, I said it's much better than losing out on all your CCs.


When previously you said:

No, it is definitely a matter of Alliance vs Horde for Warlocks. Losing out on some DoT duration doesn't compare.


Saying it doesn't compare--to me and in my interpretation--does in fact mean that dot damage is negligible and that horde is just on a qualitatively higher level. If you can't make a comparison, then that means there is no relation, and I cannot think of a better metaphor to express that other than invoking the infinite. However, if you do mean that you can compare the ease of alliance dispelling dots to some of the disadvantages locks face alliance side, I could see your point, but then your point would be mine...

If you want to be Alliance RDPS, you can go play Mage or Hunter instead, and you would be more capable than a Warlock. That's the problem Alliance Warlocks face.


You've got to be joking here. I just literally can't believe that you're serious in saying that a good alliance comp should bring 0 warlocks. WTF?

And your statements about fear ward are completely absurd btw. I couldn't disagree with you more.

You can't CC a Shaman as easily as a Paladin or Priest either. Shamans have Grounding and Tremor Totem in addition to their trinket which can break stuns, snares, and roots plus they have Earth Shock to interrupt casts and lock the school for another 2 seconds.


You've GOT to be kidding me. You do realize grounding totem has a delay from when the totem is placed to when the buff is active--a delay that is around 5 seconds. So you got to predict--3.5 seconds before a cc is cast to use grounding totem and pray that the totem isn't destroyed (as if good teams aren't going to target shaman totems /facepalm seriously). I absolutely am flabbergasted that you would think that a shaman is harder to cc than a paladin--who has an ability that makes them immune to every single spell and ability in the game.

You've got to be a troll or something.
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Re: Alliance Warlock in PvP

by Darkwinjax » Mon Nov 09, 2015 8:18 am

there is no delay in grounding totem lmao
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Re: Alliance Warlock in PvP

by diogenes » Mon Nov 09, 2015 5:51 pm

Darkwinjax wrote:there is no delay in grounding totem lmao


Really?

This video https://youtu.be/5dy9jUFPXZA clearly shows about a 1.5 second delay from when the totem is used to when the buff appears.

Sure I was wrong about the 5 seconds, I had taken that from what was said to me from other shamans. They were exaggerating by 3.5, but there clearly is a delay when you use grounding totem, and with a 1.5 second delay, you have to use that BEFORE or AT THE TIME that most cc's begin to cast.

In either case, it is still abnoxious to say that it is easier to cc a shaman than to cc a paladin. That couldn't be further from the truth. Even if there was zero delay on grounding, it would STILL be easier to cc a shaman than a paladin.
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Re: Alliance Warlock in PvP

by Aethelwulf » Mon Nov 09, 2015 7:24 pm

I see we have reached the "No way! Nuh uh! You're absurd! You...! You're a troll!" stage of the argument. I thought you were better than this. Well, may as well wrap it up then.

  1. Yes, losing part of your DoT damage is meaningful. No, it doesn't compare to losing all your CCs. The scale of impact is too far apart.
  2. Yes, you should never have Alliance Warlocks in a high skill Alliance composition. It's a waste of a slot. That's the problem. If you want to hate me for giving you the bad news, that's on you.
  3. Grounding totem is not supposed to have delay.
  4. Don't cut off the part where I say "my point is that cleanse doesn't guarantee you can counter CCs because the same CCs can also counter you unless you bubble." so that you can lecture me about a Paladin's bubble. It's disingenuous.
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Re: Alliance Warlock in PvP

by diogenes » Mon Nov 09, 2015 8:53 pm

I'm sorry, it is hard for me to not think someone is not trolling when they say fear ward is a non issue. If fear ward is placed on a druid, and mage+druid goes to get the flag and you have lock + rogue defending then there is a very high probability the druid is getting away with that flag, just because of fear ward. And fear only has a 20 yard range (Especially when locks are so squishy with poor mobility and coming out of position is a huge issue.). If you see a "resist" or an "immune" when the fear has finished casting, you've lost your chance to fear that target. Yes, fear ward can be purged, but its just not realistic that fear ward is going to get purged 100% of the time. It takes 18-24 seconds to purge 4 buffs off of 6-8 players. When you start factoring in things such as positioning, its going to take substantially longer to purge all buffs off of those players. BoF, and BoP, sure. Those will be purged instantly most of the time, because they're cast on players who have either come out of position or are in danger of dying and are being trained. That is not the case with fear ward. Its just not going to happen that fear ward is always going to be purged, especially at the first mid or bs encounter.

Just for example in the beginning mid fight of wsg its likely to be 6-8 vs 6-8, where every player has just 4 buffs thats 9-12 seconds minimum that the shaman is going to spend purging all the buffs off of every target, and that is in a mathematical vaccum. Realistically, it is going to take considerably longer due to the positioning of both teams. There is absolutely no guarantee that fear ward is going to be purged before you try to get a fear off, and to top it off, in wsg and ab, whether your playing horde or alliance, you're probably defending and the shamans are with the warriors.

Now if you're saying that locks aren't necessary for a viable comp I agree. But that is true for horde as well. Warlocks aren't as necessary as Warriors, Paladins/shamans, priests, and mages. But then again, Hunters, rogues, and druids are in the same situtaion. You could easily fill your team with warriors paladins/shamans, priests, and mages and do perfectly fine. However, in WSG there there is no better combo for defense than rogue+lock, and locks (especially soul link) are extremely strong at solo defending in ab, and are strong peelers as SM/Ruin with an instant ranged slow.

Its just plain not true that locks aren't a strong addition to an alliance team. And my only point that I've been trying to do is say that all you have done is list the negatives of locks playing alliance and completely downplay any of the difficulties there are for locks playing horde, which there are. And it is a lot closer than you are letting on. We can talk semantics about using the words "does not compare vs. infinitely stronger," but the fact remains, that you're definitely saying that locks are useless in a high level alliance team. I couldn't disagree more, as your strength doesn't necessarily hinge upon your ability to fear targets. You have a pet that can silence, dispel offensively (which alliance lacks), and kill totems. And to top it off, that pet can do all of that even if you're cc'd, stunned, being trained, ect. To say that locks don't have a place on a high level alliance team is straight up, 100% nonsense.

And you say that there shouldn't be a delay on grounding totem, I agree. However, we're talking about pvp on THIS server, and not any other private server or retail. And you still haven't explained why cc negates your fear getting dispelled because there is usually more than one other dispeller on your side other than yourself. (One paladin gets sheeped, a second paladin dispells). I genuinely do not understand what your point is on this, and you just claim that this is for some reason a refutation without any further explanation.
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Re: Alliance Warlock in PvP

by Acrimony » Mon Nov 09, 2015 10:06 pm

TBh

As alliance you will be fearing shamans.

As horde you will be fearing paladins.

Priests sit in sheep.

It only matters if you want to run around solo, then horde is the faction for you.

End of discussion. Thanks.
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Re: Alliance Warlock in PvP

by diogenes » Tue Nov 10, 2015 12:59 am

Acrimony, I can get behind you 100%.

Or maybe you'd like to get behind me? /wink =P
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Re: Alliance Warlock in PvP

by Aethelwulf » Tue Nov 10, 2015 4:57 am

Alright, regarding Fear Ward, I'm well aware that it won't always be dispelled, but Fearing twice is often an option and I maintain that it doesn't compare to the issue Alliance Warlocks face with PvPing against undead and tremor totems. You can Death Coil and refear if you need a fast second fear. Death Coil is just a 2 minute cooldown and it is technically a Horror effect, not a Fear effect, so it ignores the usual counters to Fear.

As for the loss of DoT damage, at the end of the day while Paladins can go around cleansing people of their DoTs, Shamans can cast Chain Heal. Frankly I think if it comes to removing DoTs, if a target is multi-dotted, it would be better for a Priest to remove 2 debuffs in one gcd (cleanse can only remove 1, unless target is also poisoned or diseased), and if the target is not multidotted, I'm not sure how worthwhile it is for a Paladin to cleanse someone as opposed to dropping a heal with that GCD. Cleanse is mostly good for CC removal, but when it comes to Warlocks, a Paladin cleansing off fears is much better than a Shaman having a Tremor totem out to wipe it off the entire group at regular intervals while the Shaman now spends his own actions doing other things or the fact that UD can WotF themselves out.

Using the Felhunter for offensive dispels is rather situational. That's 1 buff removed on an 8 second cooldown, while the Priest (and Shaman) remove 2 on a gcd. At higher skill levels it's not weird to run around with trash buffs (like Detect Invis and Unending Breath) just as anti-dispel shields. I could see using Devour Magic to wipe off a Power Word: Shield, etc. but its utility is mainly for defensive dispels, a niche that's fairly well covered on the Alliance faction. If they want someone who can counterspell, silence, CC, DPS, and slow people, a Mage would be better (in addition to being the only class other than the Druid that can dispel curses). If you want offensive dispels and utility, play a Priest.

As for Grounding Totem, I just reported the issue to the bugtracker with some PvP footage to prove the point. Hopefully it will be getting fixed now. Apparently it was reported months ago and closed as invalid for no apparent reason, although I consider the lack of direct evidence a factor, so I submitted some evidence with my report.

In the circumstance that a team has multiple dispellers, yes CCing is much harder, but not only can the Horde also pull that off with priests and Felhunters, but the Horde also gets AoE Tremor Totem (30 yd radius, 40 yd talented) and WotF to break these things (WotF also gives 5 second immunity), no cleanse/dispel required. Speaking of Tremor Totem, fearing Shamans is not that easy either. With some good totem positioning (ie. behind the Shaman) it's fairly hard to attack the Tremor Totem and dropping Tremor Totem has no cd.
Last edited by Aethelwulf on Thu Jun 02, 2016 3:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Alliance Warlock in PvP

by Darkwinjax » Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:42 am

"Yes, you should never have Alliance Warlocks in a high skill Alliance composition. It's a waste of a slot. That's the problem. If you want to hate me for giving you the bad news, that's on you."

alliance
highskill
composition
no warlock
waste of slot

why some people so retarded realy
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Re: Alliance Warlock in PvP

by diogenes » Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:53 am

In my experience, if your first fear fails, you generally lost your opportunity to fear. Maybe I'm bad, but I prefer to save my death coil for pealing off a healer or something of that nature, as it is quite good at that. Yea, its a relatively short cd, but it is literally our strongest ability, and I don't think it is worth it (in most circumstances, there are DEFINITELY times when I would use it to chain a cc) when there are probably going to be more important times to use it just right around the corner.

Yea, pallies have to waste a gcd per dot, but so do you to do the reverse. Especially if you're sm ruin, its critical to get corruption up on as many targets as possible. Since its a 1 to 1 trade for gcds, one pally on dispel duty is going to mitigate a tremendous amount of damage by doing so. Sure, its not worth doing at the expense of a player dying, but keeping corruption from ticking is going to nullify a lot of your damage. Yea, admittedly a priest is going to do the job better, but my only point is a paladin can do this relatively effectively, where only horde priests can, and they already have a lot of work put on them being the only defensive dispelers. You're going to get dots to tick, but you're more likely to get more dot ticks as alliance, and as a result you're going to get more nightfall procs.

Often times, at least later in the game, warriors who fap, don't have many--if any--magic effects on them. When dispelling a warrior who just fapped you're fairly likely to get that dispel if you use it. Further, the felhunter has just the same problems when using it defensively as offensively. Hunters have hunters mark, mages have detect magic, warlocks have... their dots, priests have their dots, paladins have judgments to protect hoj.... I'm not saying it isn't "more useful" as a defensive dispell because I do agree, but there are no few situations where it is very useful offensively, especially if your faction only has one class that can dispel offensively. All your argument did was point out that the felhunter is not a good dispel to rely on, but it is a good ability to augment what you already have.

I suspect the delay of grounding totem probably has to do with server lag. I doubt there's anything that can be done about it scripting wise. But on the topic of totems, they shouldn't have great uptime with hunters or warlocks who both can literally macro a totem destroyer macro to all of their abilities. The totems will get some uptime, but they shouldn't be up much considering the ease of using totem destroying macros. And bringing a warlock along as alliance to use simply as a windfury destroyer is not a bad idea at all. Destroying shaman totems is easier to counter than a priest/paladin/shaman dispelling buffs or cc's. Fear will be removed because of tremor, but it is something that can be countered just like BoF and BoP are abilities that can be countered.

Then there's WotF. And that has been discussed in previous posts. Yes, WotF is really strong against locks, but when you look at the other racials that horde has to offer, pretty much every class except for and priests (and possibly mages, but honestly i think beserking is still worth it even though it is bugged on this server). Even rogues, benefit way more from bloodfury and hardiness than wotf and cannibalism.

Sure, undead rogue is really strong, but really, the only benefit of going undead is that it makes it even easier to beat two classes that you're already super strong against. Since you're going to be able to easily beat most locks and priests anyway, Why not get a buff to your damage and a stun resist that is going to help you a lot more against classes that you don't fair as strongly against.

Now its 100% true that the priests you need to fear are probably going to be undead, and that's pretty critical. But I assert the same is true with fear ward (or at least it should be), but we're not going to get anywhere with that because my experience is so different from yours. My experience is that half decent priests generally don't give you 1.5 additional seconds to land a fear on them once they've seen an "immune" pop up and (probably notified by an addon) that they no longer have fear ward active. Additionally, the 5 seconds of fear immunity can easily be countered by adding a grenade to your deathcoil since you already brought up chain fearing with the aid of deathcoil.

My only point here is that bringing a warlock--be it on horde side or alliance--is like bringing a multi-tool on a camping trip. Sure, other specified tools are going to get the job done better, but for the sake of saving space it might be good to bring that multi-tool so you can practically carry other necessary tools. Warlocks are relatively strong in wsg, and very strong in ab. Stronger in ab partially because of their strength as defenders, but also because you're less likely to be able to deathball and that's where a multi tool will be most useful--when you cannot carry all of your specified tools at once.

I agree you shouldn't have more than 2 locks (and that's really pushing it because it is usually its hard to fit in more than 1 lock especially in wsg). But to give advice to bring no locks--regardless of the faction you're giving advice to--is a huge over-exaggeration. I mean, I'd always bring 1 lock if for nothing other than Curse of Tongues... let alone being similar to a multi-tool.
Last edited by diogenes on Tue Nov 10, 2015 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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