Warlock PvP guide

--Heavily Modified by Letalis-- Letalis 03:49, 12 Nov 2005 (EST) 60 Warlock, PvP Aficionado

General Tips
A few general tips: (ok, ok, quite a few)


 * There is no 'best spec' for PvP. Each line has its own styles, strengths and weaknesses. I've tried all 3 fully specced and found ways to excel in PvP with each one. Demonology makes you more survivable (Demonic Embrace, Soul Link) and gives your pets some nice buffs (Unholy Power, Fel Stamina, Fel Intellect, Improved Imp/Voidwalker/Succubus); a demonology warlock with the right pet out is nearly unbeatable in 1 on 1 combat (and you can summon a pet in 0.5 seconds every 15 minutes with Fel Domination and Master Summoner), Master Demonologist can help your damage or survivability depending on the pet you have at the time; group PvP isn't quite as strong since your survivability doesn't help out your friends. Destruction leans more toward a Mage style of a glass cannon. You dish out massive damage (Conflagrate, Shadowburn, especially with crits Ruin and you crit more often Devastation), but you don't really get any talents to help you stay alive; group or mass PvP is a strength here since you can drop enemies quickly (Rain of Fire or Hellfire with Intensity or Pyroclasm). Affliction is a bit of a middle ground; it certainly isn't a mix of the other two, but it gives you some ways to stay alive (Curse of Exhaustion on melee, Concentration to drain life while being hit) and some ways to do consistent DPS (Improved Curse of Agony, instant Corruption, Nightfall) and it has some abilites that improve your ability to continue a sustained fight (Improved Life Tap, Dark Pact).


 * Keep your First Aid skill as high as possible. Not only is it handy when you Fear/Death Coil/Seduce an enemy off you in PvP, but it is more handy than food to regen health after Life Tap in an instance with long fights, since it can be used in combat and heals faster (though it is slightly more expensive).


 * There one big bonus of an Imp in PvP: you don't need a Soul Shard to bring them back. If you can keep them separate from the enemy, they can deal out some nice damage. Any class with a decent ranged attack or a way to use some form of crowd control on you will kill them pretty quickly. They shine a little more in group PvP (the stamina buff is appreciated by your comrades), but this section is based more around one-on-one combat.


 * The Voidwalker has one (or two, depending on your spec) use in PvP; Sacrifice, for the damage shield. Their DPS is a joke when compared to any of your other pets, and the taunts have no effect on players. However, if you are full Demonology spec, Soul Linking with them plus the Master Demonologist buff from them (10% physical damage reduction) can be handy to help you survive against Rogues, Warriors, and Hunters.


 * The Succubus is generally the best insurance while soloing when you are open to PvP attacks. Seduction works wonders. With you and your pet having a form of crowd control, you can tag-team the opponent in a way. If they attack you, Seduce, if they attack her, Fear. Unless she is in combat, your Succubus should be invisible, and therefore there should be almost no way for them to prevent at least 1 attempt to seduce (unless you are attacked by another warlock who can see her and Banish her; in which case you Banish their pet as well). Even if you are fighting a class that has the PvP trinket to remove Fear (which is all classes but Warrior, Shaman, and Paladin), they will use their trinket to remove the Seduction and won't have it again for another 5 minutes. With a 1.5 second casting time, recasting Seduction isn't hard. They will be open to your Fear as well, but since they are more likely focusing on you, any class that has an interrupt will prevent that. She also offers solid DPS once the fight actually begins and you don't have to worry about her DPS stopping if she is out of mana, as you would have to consider with the Imp.


 * The Felhunter can make a fight a complete blowout in your favor or be the most useless pet, depending on what you're fighting. Any class that casts buffs/debuffs/heals will not like your Felhunter at all. It can help spot a Rogue or Druid in stealth before they hit you, but the range that you detect equal level players (especially if they have talents that make them harder to detect) you will probably still get hit by their Ambush or Ravage.


 * The Infernal is fun in PvP, but not something you can really rely on with the 1 hour cooldown; if you're losing to someone and just really want to throw them a curveball, or if you get attacked by multiple people (or just want to scare the sh** out of someone). Keep in mind that unlike the rest of your pets, the Infernal does NOT disappear when you die. It will continue to attack people (even your comrades if they're close). An interesting little trick to play when you know your going to die to 1-3 people and you are Soulstoned, is to summon the Infernal right before you die and let it beat on them a bit while you watch. When it looks like they're in trouble or one of them needs a heal, pop up and rejoin the fight. Try to Fear the healer if there is more than one enemy to maximize the Infernal's hurt on them.


 * The Doomguard is a even more fun than the Infernal in one-on-one or small group PvP. It's a bit more of a pain to get, however. You can use Curse of Doom to kill things (from experience has about a 5-10% chance of summoning one when the curse does the killing blow on the target), which usually requires some set up and almost impossible to do unless you are soloing (Note: the target of the Curse doesn't have to yield experience. That's right, you can go outside Orgrimmar/Ironforge and kill the low creatures with it until you get one). Or you can summon one with Ritual of Doom; this requires a full party and one of you will die in the summoning (it's fun to not mention that part, although if someone does know about it, remind them they will take no item decay if they die from it). It does respectable DPS and its abilities are oh-so-sweet. However, it's health (4-5k, don't remember exact amount) won't help it much in large scale PvP since it looks pretty damn scary and everyone will want to focus on it. If you have a healer with you, remind them to keep it healed and you can have lots of good times with it. It will have all of its abilities except Dispel on auto-cast when you enslave it; I would recommend taking Rain of Fire off auto-cast since it will not only stop its movement if it's chasing someone, but it wastes its mana for a low amount of damage. If there is a nice group to cast it on, you won't need auto-cast since you can command it to use the ability itself. Cripple will help it catch anyone trying to kite it. War Stomp can interrupt casting and it works on a sizable area (same as Tauren racial ability). Dispel can be used just as the Priest's Dispel Magic ability can - to remove debuffs from friendly units or remove buffs from enemies. One of the downsides of the Doomguard compared to Infernal is that it can itself be Feared; one way to rememdy this is to cast Rank 1 Curse of Recklessness on it right before you enslave it; this will only last 2 minutes but if you know you're going to PvP soon, it can help.


 * If you get jumped by someone and take heavy damage early, attempt to Fear or Seduce them and bandage yourself. If at all possible, hold off using your potion or Healthstone until you've bandaged. Obviously there are exceptions, but it is generally better to do first. First Aid has a 60 second cooldown, while potions and healthstones have a 3 minute cooldown, so it is possible to bandage multiple times in a long fight if you use it early.


 * Every caster has a defense against melee attackers: Priest's Power Word: Shield, Crowd Control: the Mage's Polymorph, or Escape: the Mage's Frost Nova or Blink) abilities. Our main defense, Fear, is easier to remove or be immune to than some others. Make sure to remember Death Coil, Seduction, and Howl of Terror (when facing multiple enemies). Soul Link also helps reduce the hurt; if you have it, there should rarely be a time when you do not have it on (having an Imp out is one of those times, as it will die quickly). When you're being attacked by someone with many interrupts (namely a Rogue) or being attacked very quickly (namely a Hunter with a cat pet) it can be difficult to cast Fear. In these situations, open with Death Coil and follow it up immediately with Fear.


 * Most of these tactics assume that your opponent will do the most common thing the class does (based on my experience in fighting each one). You will probably fight people with several different tactics. So if someone kills you, go back in the combat log and see what kinds of things they did that messed you up. IMO Warlocks have a deeper bag of tricks than any other class (though it takes a lot of practice to fully comprehend and utilize everything you have at your disposal). It's the only class I've played where I have never encountered an equal level player that was unbeatable. If you fight/duel someone you just can't seem to beat, step back, take a breath, and consider everything you're not using; don't let frustration get the better of you. Often the choice of pet makes a huge difference. Duels are a good way to practice and prepare for PvP. Many people have a negative notion of duels, since many are initiated by 12 year olds who want to show how cool they are, but if you find some good friends or guildmates and try out different tactics and builds on each other, it will really show in your PvP performance (and it gets to be a lot of fun when it's a friendly competition instead of a pissing contest). Give your guildmates constructive criticisms and suggestions. Hopefully they can give some back and you'll all be a little tougher to kill. It makes the duels more fun and your guild a nearly unstoppable force when you understand all the capabilities and weaknesses of not only your enemies, but the guy who is next to you in PvP.

Rogue
The central problem with Rogues, from a Warlock's point of view, is the fact that Warlocks don't in general have any defenses against melee damage from other players -- Warlocks wear cloth armor and lack melee damage absorption  Some abilities of these types do exist but are interruptible (Fear, Howl of Terror), pet-dependent (Seduction, Sacrifice) or talent-dependent (Soul Link) -- moreover, all of them are easily dispellable. The same applies to Warriors, but Rogues' ability to prevent their target from taking any kind of action while doing massive melee damage is particularly devastating to Warlocks. A Rogue is a Warlock's natural enemy.

DoT as soon as possible. Your goal is not to kill the Rogue with DoT spells, instead, you are using your DoTs as a weapon against one of a Rogue's biggest advantages: Stealth. Damage from DoTs interrupts stealth, so there's a better chance you will survive him.

The Succubus (as mentioned above) is the ideal pet for situations that you are jumped by a rogue. If they try to stun lock you with the succubus out, it will be much easier than if they crit Ambush followed by a Backstab before you move. Seduce them ASAP, move away, and bandage. If possible avoid using your potion or healthstone at this point unless they break out of the seduce. If they use their trinket to break it, recast it right away. Curse of Elements and Soul Fire are handy on a seduced target reguardless of the class (though if you have Ruin and get a crit it can pretty much set up you up to win). Immidiately after the seduction breaks hit them with Curse of Agony (or Corruption if you have it as an instant-cast from affliction) to keep them from stealthing. It's ideal to keep 2 DoTs on them throughout the fight so they can't use vanish. They will most likely use Sprint to close the distance, which is your cue to begin casting fear. Their speed bonus will turn against them when they're running away from you and opening up the distance again. If they manage to gouge you before you can cast fear, hit them with death coil as soon as they hit, followed by fear.

No rogue in his right mind would focus his attention on your Voidwalker, but sacrificing it for the shield should give you some time to fear. Remember they can still gogue or stun you through the shield (unsure if kick goes through), so try to fear them before you bandage.

The Imp die quickly when confronted with the extreme DPS a Rogue dishes out. If you should happen to have your Felhunter out, its Paranoia ability may allow you to spot the stealthed Rogue early -- but not very early -- and you still won't detect stealth very well if the Rogue comes up behind you, which they almost always do.

If you're an Affliction Warlock, instant-cast Corruption should be your DoT of choice, because of the chance that it'll trigger Nightfall, giving you an instant Shadow Bolt; Curse of Exhaustion will make it easier to kite the Rogue. A Destruction Warlock should try to get Immolate off as soon as possible, because this will allow you to cast Conflagration.

Keep your distance, placing any instant DoTs you can. Kiting is the way to go. If the rogue gets upset enough about the seductions to focus on the succubus, take the opportunity to fear. Keep in mind that Undead Rogues will have Will of the Forsaken, and many opponents may have items that can cancel fear and charm effects. Rogues are all leather, so melee damage of the sort that the Succubus can dish out will actually be somewhat effective. They tend to have a fair amount of Stamina, but not a huge amount, so a well-timed Immolate plus Shadow Bolt can and will dent them. Chances are high that he'll now try to gain on you, stun, and heal. Try not to expose your back to him - this allows you to avoid backstabs, which do a lot of damage. Also try to avoid facing him, as the rogue's gouge ability only works from the front. The best (and hardest) place to be is facing his back. Try running through him, jumping and spinning around if necessary. If you're stun-locked AND don't have out a succubus AND your death coil is on cooldown (even the best stun-lockers slip up for a split second sometimes) you could be in trouble. The hitpoints gained from a Healthstone might help get over the initial Ambush or similar attack, but don't count on it. There isn't much you can do against the poisons Rogues are so fond of putting on their weapons, and don't try to outlast him in melee. He'll win.

Warrior
Warriors become more and more a challenge to Warlocks as you progress in level.

As with Rogues, your chances of success are increased the more you can stay out of melee range. Run around a lot -- run through them if they're on top of you. Warriors can't attack you if you're behind them. Anything that's instant-cast is good, because Warriors can Shield Bash to interrupt your casting, and having all your Shadow spells shut down is crippling. So the most likely way to win is to keep them covered with instant-cast DoTs and stay out of melee range.

Since Fear doesn't automatically break with damage, it's perfectly reasonable to want to kite a Warrior with Fear in the lower levels or when their abilities are on a cooldown -- although the problem is that pesky diminishing returns counter. Undead Warriors with WotF also make Fear less useful, as do Fear-canceling items. The 2 most annoying abilities they can use against your Fear (not horror from Death Coil or charm from Seduce however, see next paragraph) are: Recklessness, which will make them immune to Fear and all of their hits will be criticals for 15 seconds (requires Berserker Stance. has a 30 minute cooldown and is a level 50 skill, so if you're fighting one lower than that you're in luck) and Death Wish (if they are Fury spec) which will make them immune to fear, increase their damage by 20% and lower their armor and resistances by 20% for 30 seconds (3 minute cooldown), don't try to make a stand a use direct damage to take advantage of the lower resistance unless they are nearly dead, it won't work out. If you have it, Curse of Exhaustion can help you keep one step ahead while running away, but it is likely to be countered with Intercept (30 second cooldown). There is also a trinket that blacksmiths get from the Thorium Brotherhood that makes them immune to fear for 20 seconds. So if you're against any high level warrior that has any skill at all, your fear will not be much use. On the plus side, the warrior PvP trinket removes Slow, Immobilization, and Stun...not fear or charm. Curse of Weakness may seem tempting, but from my experience it makes little difference when taking into account the melee DPS of a warrior and the cloth armor of a warlock.

The Succubus is the ideal pet for warrior encounters; although the Voidwalker sacrifice has its perks, you can still be shield bashed through the absorption shield. The Imp can do some damage if you can keep it away from you and thus the warrior. The Felhunter offers little against a warrior except that the silence on Spell Lock will prevent them from using any abilities. If you get the jump on them with a Succubus: Seduction, Curse of Elements, Soul Fire is a nice way to start any fight (especially if you are Destruction spec). Also, all those fancy abilities that prevent fear do NOT prevent charm (remember you will likely have DoTs on them by the time they use their fear immunity abilities, so plan ahead). As with the Paladin bubble, coaxing them to use their fear immunities early in the fight (namely before you DoT them) will work to your advantage if you have a succubus out.

Kiting is the name of the game at higher levels. When they hamstring you, jump around them like crazy and use instant-cast abilities to minimize the damage you take. If you manage to get enough lead time, make the most of it with an Immolate or Shadow Bolt. Don't die without using your Healthstone and Death Coil.

Priest
Priests can be a challenge, but there are some tools warlocks have to help out (namely the Felhunter). If you have a Felhunter out, it will be hard for you to lose if you use it properly. If you don't, managing to fear them and summon one will change your odds drastically (remember that the priest pvp trinket will remove fear though). The Felhunter can not only fulfil it's usual role of interrupting healing, but it can devour Shadow Word: Pain from you and devour their Power Word: Shield. With it's innate mage resistance, it is also less likely to be feared, or if it is, it doesn't usually last as long. (It can also devour Mind Control if they try to use you for some twisted purpose.)

The Voidwalker sacrifice will be dispeled by any good priest, and the Imp or Succubus will fall to Shadow Word: Pain pretty quickly. So there should be no sound argument against the Felhunter.

They will have the ability to dispel your immolate, corruption, and siphon life DoTs, so your curses are the only debuff you can rely on (although if you are fully destruction specced, you should be able to immolate and immediately conflagerate). Curse of Agony or Curse of Tongues are the only curses that will interfere with them (remember CoA will not go through their shield), though Curse of Elements or Curse of Shadow can be helpful in certain situations. Change the curse on them throughout the fight as fits the situation. Use your Shadow Ward, and Spell Stone if things get out of hand (which is very handy when you know your're going to PvP), to stop a considerable amount of damage; make sure to use shadow ward before a spell stone however, since it is possible to use it more than once in a fight and it will not remove your buffs. An advantage you have over them is that your fear does not have a cooldown as their's does, so unless they break your fear with WotF, it is possible to recast on them right away. You can use Death Coil as a spell interrupt. Try to interrupt their heal (if you don't have a Felhunter) and their Mana Burn.

Without a Felhunter, a fight with a priest can go either way depending on the spec and skill of the players involved. If you do have your devious little buddy out however, you should have no difficulty laying them out quickly.

Warlock
Pop up your Shadow Ward before they do. If you are Demonology a Felhunter brought out with Fel Domination can help out. They can banish your pet and any warlock who's worth his salt should, but the high resistance of the Felhunter can make them waste precious time and mana when they have to cast it several times for it to stick. With both of the pets out of the fight, your spec will play a major part in the difficulty of the fight. Destruction warlocks will probably have the greatest advantage in this situation and demonology will have the most trouble. The same curses work on them as the ones for priests, Curse of Tongues, Curse of Agony, Curse of Elements/Curse of Shadow. All your shadow spells are subject to getting through their shadow ward, which takes usually ~1 Shadowbolt or 3 ticks of Corruption, but it's the small things like that can add up for a win. Landing a fear will help turn the tide, esp if your pet comes out of banish to use its abilites while they are feared. There is no specific strategy to use or tactic to expect. The bag of tricks is too deep to take everything into account. Practice dueling with fellow warlocks and it gets easier.

Mage
Curses can be removed instantly by mages, though if you catch them off-guard you may slip one in while they're trying to figure out what to do first (Curse of Tongues is ideal). Fear is handy, though they can remove it once with their PvP trinket (and again with WotF if they are undead). Corruption is the most reliable DoT to use on them since they can remove your curses and use Fire Ward to weaken the damage of Immolate. Expect to be counterspelled early, they will usually aim for your fear (it has a 1 minute cooldown so it they will usually on get 1 per fight).

If you have the Felhunter out, use Devour Magic regularly to remove any magic debuffs on you and heal the Felhunter. The Felhunter can remove the two specifically annoying abilites. Namely it can remove Polymorph, which is something mages usually use early in the fight, and it can remove the 4 second silence if they have Improved Counterspell. The DoTs from fireball and pyroblast or the frost from any frost spell can also be devoured however. Use Spell Lock to shut their casting down when they try it. When possible, pay attention to their spells and try to figure out where they have their talent points. Spell locking a line they are fully specced in is much more useful. It is relatively easy for a Warlock with a Felhunter to defeat a similarly-leveled and -equipped Mage.

The Succubus can use her seduction on mages if you are polymorphed, and it is a good idea to seduce quickly since they will most likely turn their attention to your pet (if it is a succubus or imp) after you have been sheeped. Your pvp trinket will break polymorph, but they can recast it right away (though for a lower duration of course) and set up a pyroblast or take out your pet. The Voidwalker sacrifice is useful as always. The Imp is not as useful since it can be killed with an instant-cast fireblast (if they have some fire damage bonus) or they can spam arcane explosion to kill the imp in a few hits while simultaniously hurting you.

Druid
This is an interesting fight because these are two of the most survivable classes in the game, and a druid's bag of tricks is almost as deep as a warlock's...almost.

The Druid's ablity to rapidly recover mana as they melee in bear or cat form, then heal themselves when needed makes them very difficult for many casters to fight, because the druid can keep healing and fighting until the caster runs out of mana. The Succubus finally has a major weakness against this class, you cannot seduce them while they are shapeshifted, since they are considered a beast instead of a humanoid. They are hard to kill no matter what form they are in, so it is crucial that you keep them from healing, you can't afford to have to take down their whole health bar more than once (if the druid has any skill). Most druids fight in one of their feral forms and only switch back to their caster form to renew moonfire or heal themselves. Lucky for you, their form of crowd control Entangling Roots, doesn't really affect us much as warlocks.

If possible, try to save your Death Coil as an interrupt for their heal, though you may have to use it early if they are really tearing you up with cat form, and you're most likely going to have to try to drop enough DoTs on them to out damage the healing from their Rejuvenation or Regrowth. If you're fortunate enough to have your Felhunter out, you can stop their secondary form of healing by devouring Rejuvenation from them, and you can remove Moonfire from yourself (though that is a limited help when they decided to spam it). Fear is one thing druids have little defense against, so abuse it.

The Imp will likely be quickly moonfired to death, but the Voidwalker sacrifice loses no usefulness here.

As with all healers the Felhunter will give you a nice advantage.

Hunter
The traditional stratagy for fighting a hunter used to be seduce the hunter with the succubus, fear the pet, then Dot and nuke the hunter at will. However, recent talent changes make it possible for many hunters to make their pets immune to fear, causing. This is one situation where the Voidwalker finally gets the limelight. When the pet gains Bestial Wrath (they'll get big and turn a reddish color), sacrifice the void and fear the hunter. Then all you can really do is wait and pray (the pet becomes immune to fear, charm, stun, slow, immobilize and does double damage for 15 seconds). If you are destruction spec and get some crits in, there is a chance you could kill the pet depending on what they have, but be wary of your mana.

Unless you are reasonably confident that the hunter will not know or be able to do this it is better to simply ignore the pet, and run at the hunter (but not strait at the hunter to avoid traps). Unlike all other classes hunter's have a minimum range, often called their "dead zone" where they are all but defensless. This is a very important weakness to exploit.

This is the one time that you do NOT want the opponent to run away from you. Once you are in their dead zone a good hunter will try to wing-clip you to make it possible for them to put some distence between the two of you. In order to aviod this, and take full advantage of their weakness it is good to jump around them making sharp turns. Instant cast dots such as CoA, Improved corruption, and siphon life are your friend if you have them.

A good hunter might sill wing-clip you, or worse, catch you in a trap, then use that to get away. Ideally, you will have saved your death coil just for this situation. Follow-up the deathcoil with a fear and a shadow bolt. Anytime you fear or deathcoil them, try to run with them so they can't open up with all their ranged attacks when the fear wears off.

An inexperienced, or lazy hunter might just give up on trying to kite you and attack with their melee weapon(s) after you get close. If they do this improved Drain Life paired with Fel Concentration added with your dots will drop their health faster than yours. Or start to run away from them, if they follow you, just keep running, if they stop and try to use ranged again just turn back around. It may seem stupid since they will still be landing melee hits on youwhen you get close or might get a shot off if you get too far, but the time spent changing between the two while your DoTs are ticking will give you the advantage.

Hunter's are normally delicate enough so that their HP will drop like a rock if you manage to Dot them and maybe hit them with a few shadow bolts.

If the hunter has a pet that does faster, lower damage attacks (such as owls), you can cast Curse of Weakness and Siphon Life (if affliction specced), and actually out-heal the pet damage while you attack the hunter. These types of pets will interrupt non-instant spells however, so you'll want to stick with spells with shorter casting times.

Paladin
The popular paladin thing to do is to wait until they are low on health, bubble and heal themself, but it is possible to coax them to use their bubble early. Something I\'ve found that does that is: if you get a fear off on a paladin, don\'t hit them with heavy damage since that is much more likely to break the fear, but let Corruption and Curse of Agony tick away on them. Usually these will not break fear. Unless they have the trinket that makes them immune to fear for 20 seconds from blacksmithing, you should be able to recast a fear on them if it breaks. Their only defense is to bubble (the earlier the better), but just kite them around (their 6 second stun can get in the way of this plan a bit, unless you have your Felhunter out, in which case you can remove the debuff). Also, using an insulting emote or bandaging yourself (if you\'re wounded) while they are feared (or seduce withthe Succubus) will usually get them a little upset and provoke them into bubbling early. It\'s a nice twist to sacrifice your Voidwalker when they bubble up to give them a taste of their own medicine and basically pause the fight for a bit. The role of the Imp is about the same as the rest of the PvP fights, in that it tries to not die while blasting them.

Paladin DPS is usually pretty low compared to other classes, so even if you get stunned for 6 seconds and they bubble late, you should usually win against an equal level paladin.

All paladin spells are holy. All of them. Disabling them for 8 seconds will give you a pretty good advantage

Shaman
As with the Paladin and Druid the Felhunter is your best friend for fighting these healers. But shaman can make life a lot harder for you by using tremer totems to get in the way of fear kiting, using earth shock to inturupt your casting, and many shaman have much better DPS then paladin's or druids. It is also pointless to cast demon armor since any good shaman will just purge it right away. Therefore (as with priests), be careful with any mod that auto-casts your buffs, as casting demon armor multiple times in a fight is an embarrassing way to go.

The first thing you need to when fighting a shaman is to check the ground for a tremor totem (they are green) and get rid of it ASAP. Hitting it with a melee weapon is often the fastest way. They also might use a grounding totem (also green) so either way if you see them drop a green totem, assume that you need to get rid of it.

Both totems have similar effects but work slightly different, using this knowledge to your advantage usually catches a shaman off guard, as I've found most consider themselves immune to fear with their totems up. The grouding totem will redirect 1 spell directed at the shaman or a member of their party to itself every 10 seconds. Therefore, if you try to fear a shaman that is in range of the grounding totem you will get a message that they are immune, and the totem will stay up. However, tremor totems have very low health, so any quick (spell) damage directed at the shaman will redirect to the grounding totem and destroy it. A wand is useful for this or it can be handy to try to have your pet hit it, since it is usually right next to the shaman attacking when the totem is dropped. The tremor totem is not a constant protection like the grounding totem, it actually 'pulses'. Each pulse removes debuffs (most annoyingly fear), but there is a short break between pulses (unsure of precise time, around 1-2 seconds) when the shaman is vunerable. On occasion, it is possible to fear (with some duration) a shaman with a tremor totem because your fear lands right after a pulse and they run outside the area of effect. Another interesting bit of info is that tremor totems cannot remove horror (the effect inflicted by deathcoil) so it is possible to use deathcoil to get them out of their totems range then fear.

A simpler strategy is to just kite the shaman out of the range of his totems, however any shaman worth their salt with frost shock you when they see you doing this. So if you try to kite them, it is best to do immidiately after they shock you (FYI, all shocks share a 6 second cooldown). It takes quite a bit of practice to get good at managing your distance and which totems to worry about, but once you get the hang of it, you have pretty good odds agaist shamans (in 1v1) even with both of these totems out (although I would imagine it is harder for alliance to get in many 'practice' duels).

After the totem is taken care of (other shaman totems are of considerably less importance) try and see if you can get them to "waste" their earth shock on an immolate or something. If they fall for it cast fear as their earth shock is cooling down then fear kite/nuke them as you would most other classes.

The main shocks you will have to worry about are earth shock, which will interrupt you, and frost shock, to stop you from kiting. However the strength of one is the weakness of the other. If you are frost shocked, fear them (mind their totems). If you are earth shocked and they are not right on you, you can kite them and let your dots tick away, which will most likely lead them to frost shock you (then: see above).

With a Succubus out: The seduction can be helpful, but keep in mind that it is also affected by the grouding and tremor totems.

With a Voidwalker out: Your pet is going to do little more than tickle them, since shamans can purge the sacrifice shield.

With an Imp: Try to keep it away from them, if you kite them or have a few moments before you engage, tell your imp to 'stay' so the shaman is less likely smack it in melee (althrough if they shock it and get a crit your poor imp may be doomed anyway).

With a Felhunter: Kiting is much more viable when you can remove frost shock from yourself. If you can land some dots on them and keep your distance you can hurt them a bit while minimizing your own pain (there is a 2 second difference between their shocks and your fel hunter's devour magic, so keep that in mind before deciding to try to win only by kiting. You have the one of the most important ability available when fighting a class that can heal itself, spell lock (so make sure to turn off auto-cast).