Affliction Warlock PvP Guide

An affliction warlock should stay in the background and DoT absolutely everything wherever he is. It doesn't matter where he is, in Arenas, Battlegrounds, Duels or just somewhere in the world PvPing. Your "thing" is to keep as many dots up on as many as possible at the same time. Aff locks shouldn't play with classes that depend on CCs that break when taking damage. Well, there are exceptions. But you want to always be able to DoT everything. RLS, short for Rogue, Affliction Warlock and Restoration Shaman is a great setup for the warlock. Stuns, DoTs, Fears and Hex's go very well together.

So we've so far established that your first priority is DoTs. The second is fearing, and thirdly draining. When you are being locked down and nuked, you should go from using Fel Armor to Demon Armor and begin using Drain Life a lot, while making sure that Haunt is always up on the target. If you face a melee cleave, save your Howl of Terror for when they nuke you or when a team mate is in a critical situation. If you face a spell cleave, you can use it to instantly lock down a caster or healer when you see it appropriate.

You should have a macro for Spell Lock with your Felguard. This macro should look something like /cast [target=focus] Spell Lock

You should always have your fel guard attacking the enemy teams healer, whenever you have managed to get someone on the opponent's team to low HP, use the Spell Lock focus macro on the healer as he casts a major heal onto the low target.

You should save your Death Coil for critical situations if you see that the opponent team is able to deal too much damage. If they aren't dealing too much damage though, you can use it as a CC on the enemy healer and then follow it up with a Fear. That's a great way to put some serious pressure onto a target while locking down their healer.

Try to make sure to put your portal at a place outside of the opponent's line of sight. It could be behind a pillar on your teams side in the Arena, for example. You want to use it only when you have no means of escaping, when you are being nuked and predict that you will take a lot of damage in short time.

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