Lock On (70 lock counter list)

[Voidrunner]

I was thinking this would be a helpful selection of counters to keep in mind when facing specific classes. Please feel free to add your own.



The idea is to theory craft (being up front about it being hypothetical as nothing in a fight against another human player is ever certain) different situations and counters vs class "x,y, and z". Situational counters are something everyone should have in the back of their mind at any level and with all the patching and move changing i think it's one of the hardest things to keep up to date with. Some are intuitive and obvious while others take a little messing around with. This section is for the Warlock's batman belt of utilities.



So i just recently cap'd 70 and i have come to find that this gameplay is far from what we experienced in the seasons of BC. In my memories, Afflic Druid was something you cringed at when those gates opened. My guess is it's far less viable (note, less... not impossible) Seeing as the dmg output is so crazy I decided to go the route of Demo. Destro looks fun as hell but demo's surviability and dmg options won me over (being an orc helps as well... and my main is a bm hunter so i feel somewhat at home lol) But locks of all sorts suffer from the squishy factor more so than most clothies at this bracket (mage iceblock. spriest dispersion. etc.) but we've been given plenty of shut down CDS to use at our disposal being offensively defensive when needed. I will be looking at demo's counters but feel free to add your own for afflic/destro.



note: consider these situations 1v1 or duel (i <3 duels, but not everyone shares the love so add any situation you feel needed)



1. The stealth opener/charge:

I'll have to keep testing, but from what i see a trinket off the bat seems to be very viable having instant cc in our batman belt. In this squishy bracket taking back the opener can be the difference of half a health bar lost. Although it's possible to come back it seems safer to be ultra aggressive. So imo INSTANT trink + dcoil seems to be the best bet. You may want to save that coil and go with pet's axe toss but in many situations you want to save this (v rogue you'll want axe toss on cloak of shadows, v DK axe toss green bubble)







example 1v1: Feral

druid pounces. instant trink/coil, cast your fear, and get distance (not s-keying please) while casting curse of elements. cast hand of guld and go to town with your pet. If he trinkets fear immediately then forget the curse of elements and axe toss (since it's feral we don't have to worry about using this ability early) then recast fear. Now that you have time on your side go ahead and metamorph (best if you macro it with any item/racials to boost dps) and start your burst rotation. At this point you should have the upper hand and are safely in a offensive/defensive stance. After fear breaks you should have distance. If he charges counter immediately with a demon leap away and cast fear (depending on dr)



note: depending on your counter speed and the skill of the opponent throw in your corruption and other dots during guaranteed openings but always focus on your location as you don't have a warp drive portal at lvl 70.



sadly i'm at work so i have to get back to the irl grind but ill post more soon. GL all

 

[Willesen1]

This would have been a good post of it covered all of the classes in the bracket - however, most classes seems to counter locks/hunters at some point.



Sorry your hard work has been a waste



btw in #1.



Place your felguard a few yards away and on defensive. Whenever you get opened on, they'll waste most of their stun due to charge. Tank the last second or so and coil or throw to prevent any stuns. (double) Fear while ticking up dots and transform and nuke hard - now you should still have either a trinket or a coil for the Vanish/cloak and perhaps even a FG charge.

You have to take into account that rogues especially have so many defensive cd's that if they actually get on you (and they will!) then you'll be dead so fast, seeing you're out of cd's



edit: enjoyed reading it, amusing way of writing 5/5 !

 

[Voidrunner]

Lol i agree V a good rogue, you're in for some hard play. They'll make you waste your cds hard if they want. But I play with about 17k hp (more if i gear for it) so i can actually eat a fair amount of his cds before things get serious. As long as you are juking well, the only CD you need to wait on is cloak of shadows. With synapse springs and morph on the ready after that he is going to be eating dirt with a super pet and the inferno aura. I'll agree though a good rogue is going to piss in your cheereos if you aren't 100% on your game. One thing we have that most other classes don't is a way to consistently keep rogues back in the game with soul harvest healing which is better than eating. Sure you're most likely going to just get sap'd and have him recup... but that's better than recuping in stealth forever... then getting sap'd anyway, and if you can pull off a heal tick or another soul shard it's definitely worth using the second your out of combat.



Tbh the charge off the bat doesn't stun, it just locks them in place so i like to use it after the coil rather than have him immobilized on my face anyway.



I haven't found my hard work to be 100% a waste just yet > Synapse 480 int helps quite a bit. I need to finish gearing out (i want to snag at least 2 piece t6 off set for corruption/immolate heals, that just sounds op with fel armor healing off synapse spring crits and dmg) and i promise to put more super in depth theory crafting up. Don't count out locks just yet :]



If you don't just spew your cds out and play defensively before your burst you can pull off more w's than you'd think. Just last night i tooled a lvl 75 rogue 3-0. He may not be "you" (whoever disagrees) but he was puking out cd's and i was avoiding/healing enough to buy time for the demon burst. I may not have disengage or a flare but kiting is what i was born to do (and having an op arms warrior for a pet doesn't hurt)



Rando Tips for the day:



as demo vs disc (and some of the other healers). Opt out of your axe chucking demon and bring your fel puppy out for some buff munching spell locking fun. (this may seem like an obvious tip to most... and useless to afflic locks who found their way here, but demo locks get caught up in their big bad axe chucker, and forget that they are masters of all demons big and small)



as demo vs Hunter (this goes for most casters at any lvls vs hunter tbh)

Forget what you learned about kiting, now the hunted becomes the demon hunter! shoot a death coil on him so you're guarenteed some breathing room for casting. but more importantly this moves him off the traps he's drop'd (until your duelers know better than pre trapping vs you lol ) Why does that matter? because now you aren't thinking like a kite machine but you're thinking like melee dps. Demon leap on top of him once out of trap range and stick to him like glue. Dot's rape hunters and having mobility and so many shut downs can win you the dps race. I wouldn't say it's the hardest fight but you really can't let them get away with kiting you or you'll just eat too much dmg while getting feign death'd scatter'd etc while trying to cast cc/spells juking or not...



another tip, If you are expecting a somewhat long fight, or if you are in the hopes of wasting the opponents cds before your own burst:

USE YOUR HEALTHSTONES. and i mean soulburn that crap early on (so your Sburn cd is back up for some burst with your soulburnfire macro:

/cast soulburn

/cast soul fire

/use Gnomish Lightning Generator



Otherwise you'll find yourself needing to burst AND needing to HS. When you use your demonform you want a decent health pool already so you can focus being aggressive not defensive. But you don't want to be forced into demonform when you're not ready to burst... so HS HS HS



To those who Q_Q

"YOU USED A HEALTH STONE" respond... I play arena rules. Drop the glaives and ill drop ma stones.



Excuse the A.D.D writing style, i'm spewing out my noggin. But i'll keep it all here and by the end I should be able to organize a full Demo VS (insert class here) Edit into the first posts. GL fellow Locks and Twinks!



-Voidrunner

 

[Voidrunner]

THE MAGE



So everyone can agree... Cata made this class the talk of the town, and for good reason too. With more cc than almost any other class and burst that makes your mouth a promising fly catcher... we can see why. But fear not because there are some counters to keep in mind for the common mage of any spec.



Axe/hand of Guld:

so first off, an easy thing to forget (ha) is that mages have the best anti stun move in the game: blink. Sadly a lot of our moves rely on stunning so it's important to know what order we use them.



When you're taking the aggressive route, as a rule always axe toss before hand of guld to force a blink and keep that nasty buff up for your pets dmg. Blinking out of HoG is a pretty big cut to our dps



V Frost mage: pet choice - felguard

frost mages don't have to cast to laugh at your dropping health bar with frosty fingers and instant casts out the ass, so of course take your guard as you won't be interrupting enough. VS an aggressive Fmage it's also important to have that axe toss available for use;

-on your first deep freeze you'll want to trinket immediately. use an early axe toss to force his blink and then you're open to dcoil into hand + felstorm. Now on the next deep freeze use your pets axe toss while frozen to mess with his burst :]

To banish or not to banish... easy question. You may think that banishing is a waste of a cast but you may also be using it at the wrong time! 9/10 one of the first moves a mage uses is his pets "freeze" granting him icy fingers and freezing you from long range as a set up to deep freeze. right after this is used is not the time to banish. The cool down for freeze is 25 seconds so if you can keep track of the time a bit during the fight the best time to banish is approx 20s after. Now you've raised the cd of this spell much longer and screwed up his rotation. ONLY banish during a fear or cc. you can also make a macro to make life easier.



/target water elemental

/cast banish

/targetlasttarget



in an ideal world you want to force a mage into ice blocking before demon form so play defensively off the bat and chip away. Keep in mind that frost mages need to be kited as they are quite effective at mid to short range with the additional freezes from nova and cone of cold.



Updates on this section soon.



Vs fire and arcane, pet of choice - felhunter

fire and arcane's biggest downfall is their need to hard cast (even if fire mages can run around like firefly spazz heads). so take full advantage of this with your interrupting hell pooch.

V Arcane: Use your metamorph defensively. The second you see arcane power come up pop your morph and leap him causing as much dmg and mayhem as you can to not get melted in seconds.

V Fire: Jump the gun and meta off the bat, with fire it's a dps race that you have to win. An early bubble from fire should make you happy as Cauterize + ice block after death, is one of the most obnoxious trump cards in the game (i love using it myself