Are trying to get gladiator this season? Are you tired of being owned by rogues that just stun you all game and priests that just dispel your immolates over and over? If so you have come to the right place, I am here to teach you ten tips to become a successful warlock in Arenas. Previous blogs...

Are trying to get gladiator this season? Are you tired of being owned by rogues that just stun you all game and priests that just dispel your immolates over and over? If so you have come to the right place, I am here to teach you ten tips to become a successful warlock in Arenas.

Previous blogs by the FnaticMSI.WoW Squad:

  • Tip 1: Bind all your abilities; even the ones you think are worthless. This is the first step to being successful at any class. Every key you bind instead of click is an ability you will be able to use faster, and with more control of your movement. Even the most worthless abilities can be good in higher levels on play when you try to get creative. For example, I have hellfire bound to a decently good key so I can hellfire blinds, saps and polymorphs. I do this on a game to game basis usually.

  • Tip 2: Utilize focus macros. This is one of the most important elements of being a warlock. It is much faster than using mouse over (especially if you don't have a mouse) and you can still use your mouse to control you character's movements with precision. Using abilities such as focus fear or focus tongues, or even focus Unstable Affliction throws your enemy dispellers off. It could cost a priest a second or so before he realizes the target you had targeted wasn't the one you were casting on, or a warlock could devour a worthless debuff off his team mate thinking he was going to get feared only to get feared himself. Using focus abilities also makes you much quicker. Instead of clicking on your Proximo Arena Frame and having to move your mouse back to your action bars to click your abilities, you can perform the same actions with a press of a button.

  • Tip 3: Be able to predict your enemies. Because arenas now are so Fast Paced, you don't always have time to react to everything that is going on. That is why you utilize your knowledge from previous arena games and apply the fundamental rules of trial and error to predict your enemies. For example, if a rogue lands a sap on your healer, he is more than likely bee lining straight at you. So since you know this, you drop a shadowfury between your healer and yourself, and you will hit the rogue out 100% of the time. After he gets hit out and loses this first game, he will sap your healer and head in the opposite direction so you will pop him out again and win the arena match. Another useful trick is to know when your enemy healer absolutely have to heal and don't have time to be spam faking casts. If you spell lock healers when their entire team is at 100%, of course they are just going to free cast until your spell lock is back up. But if you take advantage of crowd controls, and own them through these, you will have a spell lock up still for when it really matters, and you will be able to score a kill through this 100% of the time.

  • Tip 4: Use banishes offensively, as well as defensively! If you get a clean opener on a druid (I am assuming you are running with a rogue) or even pressure a druid with an intercept/deathcoil lockout or something similar, you should look to banish the druid out of your lockout and fear him out of the banish while your warrior's intercept resets and then you can just own him with 0 hots. This is the best method to kill druids, as even if they shift to avoid the damage they will just get owned even harder by taking bigger damage due to reduced armor and no tree form healing bonuses.

  • Tip 5: Prioritize devours. I am going to assume the warlocks reading this article understand the concept of defensive devouring (using devour on yourself and party members instead of auto devour on the opposing team). I realize it looks very skilled to spam devour magic and get a CC off your healer or DPS instantly, but this is not always the best course of action in all situations. Once you break out of the 1900's bracket, people will take advantage of devour spamming warlocks and bait devours with ease. If you are pre-devouring, that is bad. You should never use devour magic until a CC actually hits or they will just cancel their cast, throw up an instant, and lolz as you devour that and polymorph you for full duration. You should also ensure that you prioritize who you devour depending on the situation. If you are obviously going to lose a game if your healer gets cc'd but you are currently sitting in a 9 second poly and you want to get out so bad, you save the devour for your healer you don't take the poly off yourself and lose. This is probably one of the hardest parts of being a warlock, since you naturally want to leave cc's, but then again your dispel only removes 1 debuff on a 8 second cool down. So learning to do this is important.
  • Tip 6: Tongues is not worthless. Although it may seem borderline worthless, it is still very annoying to deal with. It is not always the best ability to use, but it should definitely be casted depending on how much pressure the other team has out. I do not recommend spamming curse of tongues throughout the entire game, but when you obviously need to stop damage, you should start distributing those curses. Tongues makes it easier for your team to react, as well as easier for you to interrupt. Many times a chaos bolt conflag will fly through the air and kill your team before your paladin bubbles, or your rogue uses cloak of shadows and they will cry complaining about destruction warlocks. But the reality is, they are just very slow players and need you to have curse of tongues up to react to those casts or you will lose every game. It is also the best curse to use on paladins, because paladins are going to be immune to everything you do until both DS's are down, so this is your main method of reducing their healing output.

  • Tip 7: Aggressive fears. Now I am not telling you to bind fear arena 1,2,3 and to spam those throughout the entire game, but fearing a target you are training is not always bad. If you are playing with a rogue, against another rogue with evasion popped, an Offensive Fear on him will allow you to land a kidney or eat a big eviscerate he can't dodge. This can sometimes be very bad though, as once you full DR your fears he might just walk up to your healer and own him and you won't be able to do anything. So use this in correspondence to how many cool downs the other team has, and make sure it cannot come back to hurt you later. Another form of aggressive fearing is to chase the enemy healer around all game spamming fears, these are the most aggressive kind.

  • Tip 8: Protect your fears. If you are playing against another warlock and try to fear them, they will land some clutch Instant Devours, removing your fears instantly. But if you fear them and then throw up a corruption instantly, they have a 50% chance of instant devouring corruption and eating the full duration fear. So basically you have virtually 0% chance of landing a full duration fear (unless it is a howl of terror that also hits his pet) on a warlock with no other debuffs up, but a 50% chance with corruption! I like those odds. Also if you know a warlock likes to Instant Devour, you can trick him by throwing up corruption right before your fear finishes, and then fearing him, bringing the probability up to 100% for success.

  • Tip 9: Know your team mates. If you have a very good healer, you can reliably devour your DPS because you can expect him not to eat every CC in the book. Vice versa for having a very good DPS. The way you play should depend entirely on how good your team is, if your team is good, you will have fewer things to manage and more time to own. If you are forced into fel doming to devour to save your team every game, then something is wrong and you should find new team mates. Knowing when swaps are going to happen, and whether or not someone on your team is capable of staying alive in a certain situation is also a very good thing to know. For example, my shaman Chris Douja Cossey dies 100% of the time to RMP's. I know he is going to die before the doors even open so I usually do not even bother to make health-stones.

  • Tip 10: Never give up. If you are not successful in your first arena match, try, try again. Not everyone is born with natural WoW talent like myself, so instead of being able to walk in and win all your arena matches you may have to earn them through hard work and perseverance. But the important part is to always aspire to get better, and always give 110% in every arena match you play! As a wise man once said, Better a Has-been than a Never-was. But better a Never-was than a Never-tried-to-be.