What's the best Warlock lvling spec?

[Deleted]

im lvling my troll warlock now...
And I'd like to ask what's the best lvling spec for lock in bgs (pvp) and dungeons (pve)

[Needonboots]

Frost spec

[JustAnotherForumPoster]

What you find yourself enjoying most, I'm partial to affliction but people will swear to all specs.

[Needonboots]

What you find yourself enjoying most, I'm partial to affliction but people will swear to all specs.

I don't like affliction when mobs die in 3 seconds.

[Fezziwick]

Whatever is fun for you.


Use a voidwalker though if you're not demo.

[xskarma]

Before level 42 probably Affliction with Felhunter. After level 42, in bg's and dungeons, probably Destro (with Felhunter till you can get the Grimoires, then switch to Sacrifice). If you ever do any normal quest leveling though, I'd recommend Affliction with Voidwalker(lord).

[Deleted]

Once you get Soul Swap with Soul Burn - definitely affliction, it's insane. Full dots on 4 targets, then just drain soul as one of them is about to die, and dot up 4 more. You can AOE pull like crazy.

[xskarma]

Once you get Soul Swap with Soul Burn - definitely affliction, it's insane. Full dots on 4 targets, then just drain soul as one of them is about to die, and dot up 4 more. You can AOE pull like crazy.

OP was asking about dungeons and bg's. Don't think the tank would appreciate you starting to AoE pull xD

[Deleted]

Still, you have about zero ramp-up time, and barely have to cast anything. Just dotting up everything that moves and that the tank has aggro on should suffice. Then again it felt really effective just questing as affli (80+).

[Deleted]

In my experience demo outdid the others by far, 85-90 took me 1h30-2h30 per level, I ran with felguard and GoSup, I basically just threw corruption on 7-10 mobs, waited for them all to gather up, then popped meta, felguard bladestorm, immo aura and the substitute you get instead of hand of gul'dan in meta, if mobs weren't dead by then I just spammed the felfire substitute in meta. If you use the glyph, no matter what attack you do, as long as you're in meta when the target dies, you regain 20% health. You also gain 150-ish demonic fury every time you kill something in meta baseline, so after those 10 mobs were dead I would be at full health, full DF, and felguard bladestorm basically has no CD, so I'd be ready to pull 10 more.

Edit: I mainly did questing, when I did dungeons as meta I was able to do consistent 60k dps on trash and around 30k on bosses, just because demo aoe is so insane and has no ramp-up.

[fuzzylizard]

Affliction - just dot things up and watch them die. Go with Harvest life if you get in trouble with AoE pulls and use the voidwalker for questing and the felhunter for dungeons and BGs. From a spell effect point of view, it is a little boring visually, but it does kill things and is fun to play. For level 85-90, I went with grim of supremacy and mostly just steamrolled my way through everything. The only time I got in trouble was in dungeons when I forgot to get rid of my voidlord.

[The William]

Destruction was the best for me. Conflag slowed them and they were usually dead before they reached me, and using Shadowburn let me have liberal use of Chaos Bolts. Use GoSac with it as well. If you accidentally pull a bunch, you can AoE Conflag and throw Rains & Immo's until they're all dead.

Destruction can be competitive in the dungeons as well if you tab Shadowburns, but it's more or less for show. Demo has extremely strong AoE and is a solid choice for dungeons.

[Beace]

I'm currently leveling a lock, and figured I'd share my experience here.

I'm currently lvl 32, and things are going very slow. I don't have any heirlooms, and I pretty much only quest. Locks at low lvls do very low dmg. I've experimented with all three specs.

Affliction might be nice later, but at low lvls the dots do way too low dmg, and you only got two of them. Multi-dotting doesn't work, because a "full" set of dots will take maybe 40% of a mobs life. So far, I find affliction the weakest choice by far.

Destruction is what I've used most of the time, and at these lvls I find it the best choice.

Demonology is decent once you get Wild Imps at 32. When you get going, you'll have a ton of imps with you, doing very good dmg. When you've fought for a few minutes and got a bunch of imps with you, Demonology definitely does better dmg than Destruction. But until you get those imps with you, Destruction does better dmg and is an easier/smoother spec. For dungeons or grinding in same area for longer periods of time, Demonology would be my choice. The Metamorphosis ability seems rather pointless and weird at this low a lvl.


At 36, affliction gets access to a third dot: Agony. I have some hope this might make affliction good, but for multi-dotting to be effective it basically requires that a mob dies or almost dies from the 3 dots. We'll see what kind of dmg Agony does. Next up after that, all three specs gets extremely important spells at 42 (Felguard, Chaos Bolt and Malefic Grasp), which I suspect will change the whole thing up. Will post again later.

---------- Post added 2012-11-03 at 03:49 PM ----------

Hit 42 a little while ago, so figured it's time to add some more thoughts.

Getting Agony at 36 was nice for Affliction, but far from enough. Enemies aren't even close to dying from all 3 dots. Maybe if you're in full heirlooms it might work, I dunno. Destruction also gets Havoc at 36, which I find myself using more and more, it's actually quite nice.

At 42 Destruction gets Burning Embers and Chaos Bolt. I thought this was gonna be a game changer, but it was extremely underwhelming. It takes a very long time to build up Burning Embers (which is the resource for Chaos Bolts), with normal questing you can expect to get 1 Chaos Bolt off every 3rd mob or so. And it's not like the Chaos Bolt one-shots mobs, it'll do 40-50%.

Affliction gets Malefic Grasp, which definitely increases single target dmg by quite a bit. When I played around with it, it felt like I was killing stuff at about the same speed as Destruction. But when I looked at Recount, it was clear that Destruction did 20-30% more dmg both against single target and two targets with Havoc up. Any attempts to pull 3 or more mobs as Affliction, gets me killed or close to it.

I haven't tried Demonology, and I doubt I will in the future, simply because I don't really like its playing style.

For now, my choice is Destruction for 1-42.