The Warlock presents one of the greatest challenges to run on a competitive arena team, in part because he tends to be the most fragile character in the game when subject to concentrated attack. However, he also has access to some of the move powerful PvP abilities, led by the incredibly versatile Curse of Tongues and the ability to spam targeted Fears. Additionally, the Warlock can dish out more damage than almost any other class if left alone. Properly played, geared, and supported, the Warlock can be a great asset to a well-constructed team and is one of the more dangerous classes on the battlefield.

Overview

At any level of play, the Warlock’s chief concern is always survivability. While all classes have an array of “clearing moves” (such as Death Coil, Psychic Scream, Root, Frost Nova, etc., that actively influence the opponent in some way that pulls them off their target), most classes also have access to “escape moves” as well; these abilities, such as Blink/Ice Block, Druid Shapeshift, Blessing of Protection, Divine Shield, Vanish/Cloak of Shadows, etc. allow a character to get away without giving the opponent a resist check or requiring some form of spell channeling. A Warlock, on the other hand, has access only to clearing moves – Death Coil, Fear, Felguard Intercept, Spell Lock, Howl of Terror, and Succubus Seduce. Additionally, most of these are single-target abilities, at best pulling off one person, and several of them either have cast time (and thus can be interrupted) or only work on certain classes (Warrior are fully immune to Fears at most stages of a fight). Since a Warlock has no escape moves to quickly flee a dangerous situation, and have no way to pull most snares and roots off themselves, the Warlock’s other major weakness comes into play: Warlocks have the lowest armor in the game of any class, and thus take the most raw damage from physical attackers.

Because of these reasons, it is really not considered practical to run any talent build with a Warlock that does not include Soul Link and other survivability talents in the Demonology tree. A Warlock needs enormous amounts of HP just to survive against melee.

However…

A Warlock who survives initial bursts can have a lasting, decisive impact on a fight. Curse of Tongues remains one of the most powerful abilities in the entire game when fighting against enemy casters, severely hampering their damage and healing capabilities while also slowing the rate they can apply crowd control of their own. Fear, combined with the Felguard’s Intercept or the Felhunter’s Spell Lock, makes the Warlock one of the best characters at disrupting opponent healers and damage casters. Finally, Death Coil presents a universal one-time tool for offense, defense, and general crowd control, helping smooth over dangerous situations and assist in timely kills.

Warlock Talent Specs

If you are looking to PvP seriously and fare well against all teams, a heavy Demonology Spec is probably the only real consideration – anything else simply lacks the HP and other survivability options to function against most teams. While a 41-point Affliction build will decimate certain teams that cannot handle an abundance of Damage over Time (DoT) spells, any team running 2 melee classes can drop the Affliction Warlock before he can make a real difference. Heavy Destruction builds have a great deal of offensive power and can drop someone fast if left alone, but they suffer just as much as the Affliction Warlock against multiple melee. Additionally, they fill much the same role as a Mage would in the same position, without several of the perks gained from fielding a Mage (such as survivability – the mage has several tools that make focusing on them first extremely dangerous and rarely successful for the opposing team).