Warlock Leveling Guide

[gherkin]

Warlock Leveling Guide
Last Update: June 2010 (aka 3.3.3, just before 3.3.5)

This guide is simplified for people who want as much information as they can get as fast as possible. Good for you, this is how a Warlock works. If you want to discuss something or have a question not answered, post in this thread and we will get to it. I will review this thread every couple days and update the main posts, but we have several extremely able members who can answer your questions. Don't just wait for me!

A quick reminder. If you have an opinion about this guide, or a response to a question, the phrases "retard" "l2play" or anything to do with someone's intellect are not appropriate responses and will be dealt with. We can be adults and give reasons for our disagreements.

Lastly, Jame's Alliance and Horde Leveling Guides (also available as an add-on!) are amazing and best of all free. I highly recommend the guide in conjunction with the new questing interface as they work very well together.

Please ignore the first 450 replies to this thread, as they pertained to WOTLK leveling. The discussion for Cataclysm starts here.

For "Just tell me how to spend my talent points", click here.

For "Just make it simple and explain it to me," click here

For more advanced topics, click here.


***CHANGE LOG***
3.3.3 Update - Fixed some incorrect linking, added Destruction/BG/Instance leveling tips (will expand in future), expanded Demonology leveling to include Destruction sub-spec, fleshed out a few more details and language issues, and added an end-game suggestion for getting into heroics faster.

3.3 Update - Changed 1-29 spec (more dps), updated all Affliction talents to include Improved Felhunter (now a dps boost), added a suggested 35-55 talent pick order, added some more information to leveling as Destruction.

3.2.2 Update - Renamed a bunch of sections to make more sense, moved "Nightfall" information paragraph from 1-29 to 30-54 section. Updated level 40+ pet use. Added macros and suggested ways to use your Felhunter better.

[gherkin]

Skip this section if you don't know what I mean.

Affliction 1-25
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#Ibhr
Glyph at 25: Lash of Pain, Healthstone, Drain Soul
Pet: Succubus once available, Voidwalker until then

Affliction 25-67:
Questing: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IrGr0hsGcb
Dungeons: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IrGr0hsGcb
PVP: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IrGroGoGRb
Glyphs at 50: Lash of Pain, Healthstone, Drain Soul + Unstable Affliction, Soul Link, Unending Breath
Pet: Succubus

Affliction 67 and up:
Questing: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IrGr0hsGsdhbr Last points don't matter
Dungeons: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IrGr0hsGsdhZI Last points don't matter
PVP: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IrGroGoGRdhbr Last points don't matter
Glyphs: Lash of Pain, Healthstone, Drain Soul + Unstable Affliction, Soul Link, Unending Breath + Corruption, Shadow Bolt, [PVE] Health Funnel/ [PVP] Curse of Exhaustion


---------------------------------------------------------------

Demonology:
1-83: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#I0hZIbrcMudRdohb

Order: Progress down the Demonology tree, ignoring Demonic Embrace and Ancient Grimoire unless you have nothing else to spend points on. Then move into Destruction and head back to Affliction once Destruction is finished. Last couple points don't matter.

Pet: Felguard until 25, Succubus until 45, Felguard for the remaining.
Glyphs at 25: Lash of Pain, Healthstone, Drain Soul
Glyphs at 50+: Immolate, Healthstone, Drain Soul + Metamorphosis, Soul Link, Unending Breath + Corruption, Shadow Bolt, Health Funnel


---------------------------------------------------------------

Destruction:
1-75: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IZcZIbbfRfsobo After that, doesn't really matter.

Order: Progress down the tree, ignoring Burning Embers and Empowered Imp unless you have nothing else to put points in, then move to Demonology. For more spending, I'd suggest Corruption if you still use it at this point, or head towards Mana Feed.
Hint: Once you get to level 54, always open with Soul Fire

Pet: Imp to Succubus, Succubus to 65, Imp after that
Glyphs to 65: Lash of Pain, Healthstone, Drain Soul + Immolate, Soul Link, Unending Breath
Glyphs 65+: Immolate, Healthstone, Drain Soul + Conflagrate, Soul Link, Unending Breath + Imp, Shadowflame (76!), Health Funnel

[gherkin]

This section of the guide is for people who want 1 through 79 as simply as possible with as little fuss as possible. The spec choices reflect this and will be explained. Yes, you can go ~ANY SPEC~ 1-79 if you'd like, but this is impractical for many reasons. See the level range to find out why. Here we go.

Do this, all the time, or you're a scrub:
Spellstone - we're using dots the whole way. Spellstone makes them better. Firestone is not as potent.
Demon Armor / Fel Armor - If you do not have your armor up, you fail. Its free buffs.
Healthstones - This is your first emergency button. We all make mistakes, this is how you learn from them without dying.
Soulstones - If you are smart and don't fight in the middle of spawn points, this eliminates your downtime.

Soulshard management: "Whine! I have too many!"
Macro:

/run i="Soul Shard"d=GetItemCount(i)-20 for x=0,4 do for y=1,GetContainerNumSlots(x) do if (d>0) then l=GetContainerItemLink(x,y) if l and GetItemInfo(l)==i then PickupContainerItem(x,y) DeleteCursorItem() d=d-1 end end end end

See this text "GetItemCount(i)-20"? Replace 20 with the number of shards you want to keep. Click this macro once to destroy all but this number.

That gut feeling when you think you're going to die:
Suppress it. Embrace it. Live it. A warlock lives by constantly taking damage and shrugging it off like nothing. If you ever feel comfortable of your survival, you are not pulling enough mobs, or are extremely overgeared for the area. A Warlock is the only class in the game who can pick a fight with 20% HP and come out with full Health, Mana, and a field strewn with corpses. The only specs who comes close to this are lvl 75 Prot Warriors with Enraged Regeneration and level 73 Shadow Priests with Dispersion and Meditation. Even then, you can mop the floor with both of them.

_________________________________________________
1-29:
I'm not going to lie to you. The first 14 levels of your life as a warlock will be difficult. You will have mana issues, health issues, and you will die a lot. This turns around at level 14 when you get Drain Life.

(Keep in mind that this guide is intended for people who may not have heirlooms or good gear. If you have these things, your experience will be less difficult and more facerolling. If you think you need these things, you are wrong. Smart > Gear.)

Purchases:
Lesser Magic Wand http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11287
Greater Magic Wand http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11288
Bloodscalp Channeling Staff http://www.wowhead.com/?item=1998

Spec:
End up at level 29 with this spec
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#I0x0bZ0Gchk
Fill out the demonology tree first, then fill out the Affliction tree
Glyphs: Lifetap and Unending Breath

How to play:
The spec doesn't work until you get Sacrifice (16) and Drain life (14), so until then you will have to use your wand a lot. As I have said, the worst parts of leveling a warlock are these first levels. Here's how you manage:
-Only do green quests (this applies to all classes - it makes the first 20 levels that much easier)
-Do two starting areas, such as Tirisfal Glades until level 7, then migrate over to Silvermoon/Ghostlands until 11 or 12, then back to Tirisfal/Silverpine. For Alliance, this would mean Dun Morogh/Elwynn Forest till 11 or 12, Westfall next and Loch Modan after.
-Dot (Corruption), Dot (Curse of Agony), Wand till it's dead.
-Your wand is ridiculously overpowered at this level, it won't take long.

~If you are fast at moving and know the quests, you should reach 16 in 12 hours or less, not factoring in Heirloom gear~

Now that you're 16, the keys to this spec are your Wand, Corruption, Curse of Agony, Drain Life, and your Voidwalker. Leveling is all about synergy, so here is how this spec works together to make you a badass:
1) Demon Armor prevents 25% of physical damage taken.
2) Your pet absorbs 20% of your damage taken.
3) Your pet actively prevents damage being done to you by sacrificing part of its health.
4) You heal your pet by doing damage.

Summary: You kill shit and heal your pet. Your pet uses this healing to make you take less damage. You kill more shit. It's a glorious cycle of violence.

Your voidwalker should have all abilities turned off and Soul Link active. "But Gherkin, he's a tank!" No. Smack yourself. Your pet is a dumb shit. He will stand in one place and tank the monster while you could be running around killing things. The second he gets aggro is the second you will
a) wait for the mob to die,
b) let him despawn because you go out of range, or
c) pull more mobs because he stood in another mobs path.
End result: if he gets aggro, you will have down time, either passively (you died) or actively (you wasted too much mana/hp trying to survive the fuck up). Your pet serves two purposes: minor dps and shields. That's it.

Let's say you're doing a quest that requires you to kill boars for meat. You walk into an area with boars and it should go kind of like this: Corruption and Agony on 3 or so mobs. Your pet is running out to smack on the first one because he's set to defensive - remember that with his Taunt disabled, he will not put out enough damage to hold aggro over your dots. The other two boars are running at you, each with both dots. Hit Lifetap first to keep your mana (and the glyph buff) up. Hit Sacrifice second because the boars should be on you and you want to prevent the damage. Wand the first boar until it's dead. Your shield will expire soon (or already has) so cast Drain Life to keep your HP up.

Boom, three mobs dead in around 24 seconds. Maybe a bit longer. Do this a few times until you get the hang of it, then start increasing the number of mobs you pull at a time. You'll eventually stop using your wand (level 20ish) and start using Drain Life more. You should be able to handle 6 or 7 green-level mobs without heirloom gear. Key word - green mobs. Yellow mobs hit too hard, causing more damage (hit harder and more frequently due to less misses and more crits, i.e. tank mechanics) than you can safely handle in numbers. If you happen to fight Casters (Defias Pillagers for example), they are your priority. Instead of Drain Life the last one, drain life the caster. Lastly, if you find that you can't pull this off, your spell power may be a tad low. This is resolved in two ways - use Immolate with Corruption and Curse of Agony, or get better gear.

Gear: You should be able to obtain 100 spell power by ~lvl 32 without much work, and it is highly recommended that you do so. Here's a link for things you can get between 20 and 30: http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4&filt...;crv=0#0+3-2+1

Some people are having a hard time getting 100 spell power by lvl 32. Scroll down to the advanced topics (the next post) if you are as well. I've created some gear sets and recommendations for you.

RULES OF DOT-DOT-TAB - DO NOT:
-Go below 50% health
-Go below 50% mana
-Let your pet go below 50% health
-Cast Sacrifice before a mob reaches you. Only when you have 2+ beating on you
-Fight inside a spawn point. Sometimes respawns are instant, which can get painful very fast.
-Cast Fear. Ever. It causes the mobs to unpredictably run off in a random direction, usually grabbing more mobs in the process who you did not necessarily want, see, or prepare for. Same with instances.

Why not Affliction?
Affliction's talent tree features minor damage upgrades with zero survivability options. You rely on spell power gear, and there isn't a lot of it this early on. You need to get used to being hit, because despite wearing cloth a warlock gets hit a lot.

Note the dependance on gear. If you have heirlooms and blues and really just want to race to 80 as fast as you can, then by all means go balls to the walls affliction ending up at this spec for level 30, and continue the guide as normal.
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IbxMbubho

Some people advocate sticking with Affliction the whole way up regardless of gear level because its simpler and doesn't force you to respec. I disagree with this because of the difficulty curve. I find that things are more fun if the difficulty doesn't jump around and is a smooth transition. Affliction 1-29 is of average difficulty, considering other classes. However, the second you put that last point into Siphon Life you become a walking god. Instead, I suggest you play 1-16 with average difficulty, then make the game a bit more trivial 16-24, then a bit more 24-30, and finally culminating into godhood.

Why not Destruction?
Destruction's talent tree features major damage upgrades with zero survivability options. Drain life hits for nothing, your shields don't last very long, and you rely on spells with a cast time, meaning getting another spell off will take an extra 1 second (pushback mechanics). You will run out of mana all the time, use fear far too often, and only kill one monster at a time (two if you're good).

Destruction is good for leveling with a friend (regardless of their class) and gets much better around level 40. Until then, stay away.

_________________________________________________
30-54:
Respec time! You now know how to dot multiple mobs and survive, now its time to turn on extreme mode.

Purchases:
Demons Deck (new weapon at 40)
Dreamweave or Shadoweave armor

Spec:
Respec to
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IbxMbubho
And it should look like this at 55
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IfxRbubhoiA0hk
Glyphs: Siphon Life, Lifetap and Unending Breath

How to Play:
The major difference here is that now instead of pressing a button to stay alive (Sacrifice) it happens passively (Siphon Life) and you can get more healing out of Drain Life (Fel Concentration, Soul Siphon) and more mana (Imp Life Tap, Imp Drain Soul) and a lot more damage (Empowered Corruption, Shadow Mastery) which again means more healing (Siphon Life). See where we're goin' here? More damage = more survival. What other class in the game gets stronger when there are more opponents to play with? None. Just you.

There is no change to your strategy. Corruption, Agony, next!

You should now have the Succubus out. She does more damage than the Voidwalker (since his shield is redundant now) and an ability to prevent her from tanking (Soothing Kiss). Pet mana has been fixed enough that she will not go OOM with Lash of Pain and Soothing Kiss both enabled. However, disable Seduction. By all means learn how it works and have fun with it, but she won't act as you expect with it enabled. Lastly, if she manages to hold aggro with this configuration (unlikely!) then disable them for a level or two.

At 42, switch to your Felhunter. Keep Devour Magic and Shadow Bite on auto. Spell lock is turned off (in case you need a silence!). I have suggested you talent Improved Fel Hunter - this will cause him to Shadow Bite ~a lot~, and potentially pull aggro. For the first little bit, pay attention to him to ensure he's not getting out of hand. If you find that he is always pulling aggro, swap back to your succubus for a level or two. If he holds aggro for 1-2 seconds, that's ok. Your dots will eventually give it back to you.

A word on Spell lock: If you use this ability on a caster, they will run towards you making you have to run less distance to loot them. Efficiency!

A word on Devour Magic: Devour Magic will automatically remove buffs from enemies such as shields or +damage effects. If you get adventurous, disable this ability and use it on yourself to dispel harmful effects such as DoTs or debuffs. Will not remove Curses, Poisons, Stuns, or Diseases. Macro:

/cast [@player, modifier:alt] Devour Magic; [nomodifier] Devour Magic

Alt Click for self dispel. Click for target dispel.

A word on Dark Pact: I have not added Dark Pact to the suggested build because Life Tap is just so good by itself. If you are leveling on a PVP server, you may want to change your spec around to use this ability. It takes mana from your pet (in this case, Felhunter). Your Felhunter regens this mana through Shadow Bite + Improved Felhunter. You take no health hit. This doesn't matter on PVE servers because you will be healing yourself for more than a Life Tap hits for, but on a PVP server I would watch you and wait until you had life tapped a few times then ambush you. You're still a beast, but this gives you an extra edge.


Gear: Spell power is your most important stat because it increases your damage AND healing. Your goal should be 100 spell power by level 32 (extremely easy to achieve if you know where to look). You should already have a good start on it, but heres the link again.
http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4&filt...;crv=0#0+3-2+1

Here's your next gearing step:
http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4&filt...23;crs=1;crv=0

Note that you can get 100 spell power without going into a dungeon. It is just as easy, but requires you to think about where you will be questing more. Lastly, you will be using the Demons Deck weapon until Outland, so if you want to get it enchanted it's not a waste of money.

You should be seeking to double your spell power every 15 levels. This means getting to 200 spell power at 45-47, 400 at 60-62 (this is a bit tougher) and 800 at 75-77 (very easy).

As you level, you will reach a point where you can choose between two or three talents in order to fill out the "template". There is no right answer, pick what you like, but this order will result in more damage sooner:
Shadow Mastery (More damage & healing, all spells)
Eradication (More spells out per unit time)
Improved Fel Hunter (More pet damage)
Contagion (Prerequisite to UA/Pandemic, minor dps upgrade)
UA / Pandemic (Replace Immolate with a better dot, two hardest hitting spells can crit)
Malediction (Minor dps upgrade, major crit upgrade with Pandemic)


Why not Demonology?
You start to get a lot of spell power in the 30's, and your pet doesn't increase as fast as you do. Buffing your pet at this point is like taking your stats and saying "Hi, can you make these worth less to me? I think they're too strong." It's still viable, but you will get more out of an Affliction build. Demonology hits the ground running at level 55, see the advanced section for more.

Why not Destruction?
At this point, Destruction starts losing its mana problems because you hit harder. It's just as viable as Affliction if you like that playstyle, but I just showed you how to dot and run and drain tank. This is the easymode guide, so why should I retrain you? One more thing about Destruction is that it's very crit focused - the more crit you have, the better it works. The problem is that as soon as you gain a level, your crit % goes down. This is how scaling works, and its working AGAINST you as a Destruction lock. More in the hardmode section.

_________________________________________________
55+:
This is where you can branch your playstyle. Blizzard nerfed the shit out of Outland so mobs that used to be challenging can still be steamrolled. You can continue the Affliction path or swap to a Felguard build. I'll explain how they both work, but the recommendation of people in this thread is Affliction, providing you can maintain your spell power (i.e. enchants and dungeon or heirloom gear). You can do Elite quests in both specs.

Don't forget to start using Fel Armor when you get it. Very important!!

Purchases:
Nothing. Quest rewards will kick the ass of anything you can buy, or is worth buying at least. If you feel you must buy something, get +Spell Power gems from Northrend and take quest rewards/dungeon drops with sockets to put them into. Here is a list of all Outland gear you might get with sockets in them: http://www.wowhead.com/items=4?filte...0:0;gb=0#0+2+1
Specifically, note the green items from Zangarmarsh and Terrokar. Very easy to obtain.

Demonology Option:
Respec to
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IcZ0GchkAdi0sxz
(Yep, 2 unspent points, keep reading!)
Glyphs: Felguard, Lifetap, Drain Soul and Unending Breath

How to Play:
You now have the Felguard. He will do half your damage from now on. The main reasons for this build are Elite quests and an excellent stat boost, but most of all a change of pace. First, in Outland there are a lot of elite quests, such as the Matriarch, Terrokarantula, Drillmaster, and the Nagrand Mastery quests. In these cases your Felguard will be your tank and you defeat these mobs through attrition - one dot, spamming Health Funnel, taking care of adds yourself. Secondly, the talent Demonic Knowledge lets you hit just as hard as you did in Azeroth despite the health increases mobs get in Outland.

For the Felguard, you can keep everything except Anguish (the aggro button) on auto. He will never need healing on normal mobs and if left to his own devices will usually win 1v1 against mobs.

There are two paths you can take with a Felguard build. The first option is to go down the Affliction Tree. This will get you Siphon Life back at level 71 and does not change your playstyle in the slightest.
You will end up at:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#Ifxrbz0hoZ0GchkAdi0sxz

Your strategy is the exact same as it was - Corruption, Agony, (sometimes Immolate), and Drain Life as necessary. You will literally plow through everything at a similar pace to what you were experiencing before, but now with your pet propping you up too. Once you get Siphon Life, you are effectively invincible.

From here you should aim for 5/5 Shadow Mastery, as that is the largest dps increase you have left.


The second option is to go down the Demo tree a bit more, then branch into the Destruction Tree.
You will end up at
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IcZ0GchkAdi0sgzNoVM

Your strategy changes. This is ok! Since the quests in Outland are very different from what you were used to, killing gobs and gobs of enemies is not as important. You will put up Immolate and simply Shadow Bolt the target to death. When you get Incinerate, do not use it - Shadow bolt does more damage unless you go deep into the destruction tree or pick up Molten Core (which is a raiding talent and not useful to you)

One strategy that may become fun is the use of Decimation. The combo starts like this: Dot the mobs, have the pet attack one, then when a mob hits 40% hp, wind up a shadow bolt. It will impact the mob as they cross the 35% threshold and sometimes kill it. You get the Decimation proc (read the tooltip, it's awesome). You now have 10 seconds to nuke the shit out of another mob with gigantic balls of flame fueled by souls themselves. If inside that 10 second window, a mob is knocked down below 35% and hit again with a Soul Fire, the buff refreshes. If you're paying attention and consider weaving shadow bolts in there, you can keep this chain alive for as long as there are mobs to hit. It's seriously epic.

And what most people talk about the most is Metamorphosis. When you get this spell, you become a demon with a new cast bar. This spell bar has a bunch of useless stuff on it, so cast it in town and quickly drag the following spells to it:
Demonology: Immolation Aura, Demon Charge
Destruction: Rain of Fire, Shadow Bolt
Affliction: Life Tap, Drain Life, Death Coil, Corruption
Note that these spells are useful for leveling. You may want different ones for raiding or instances.

Your tactic with meta is quite simple. Make sure you have full HP and get on your horse. Ride around a camp of mobs gathering them all up until you are either dismounted or have a lot. If you feel like you need more, use Corruption to tag them and get them running at you. Now pop meta, Immolation Aura, and cast Rain of Fire at the ground under your feet. You may need to do Rain of Fire twice. However, they're now all dead. Before looting, make the most of your +20% damage buff and use Demon Charge to get closer to another pack of mobs and nuke them with shadow bolt until the duration ends. By the time you're done looting and travelling to a new set of mobs, the cooldown will be up again for you to repeat. Make sure you drain life to top up your hp!


Quick Q&A:
Q: Why not go Felguard at 50?
A: He has no abilities and scales poorly. Thus he has no HP and dies a lot to stupid, stupid things. I once had mine die because two dragons breathed on him at the same time - something I myself could have shrugged off.

Q: Why don't you pick talents like Molten Core or Demonic Resilience?
A: Molten Core sucks for leveling - the increased duration on Immolate doesn't make a difference and the proc is only useful if you have Incinerate (64+), which again relies on Immolate to do decent damage. It's simpler to just shadow bolt. Demonic Resilience is a no brainer because the options are 10% crit or ~200 spell power.

Q: Why Felguard at all? I was doing just fine.
A: Then don't change! Keep reading to stay affliction, but some people want a change of pace or a different playstyle. It's also kind of fun if you can learn how to chain Decimation procs.

Q: How do I solo elites?
A: Here's how to down a simple one, such as the Rock Flayer Matriarch.
Send in your Felguard with all abilities up, including Anguish. Wait until he (Felguard) is at 75% life and start channelling Health Funnel. If he seems to be taking a lot of damage, cast Curse of Weakness on the elite. Otherwise, cast Curse of Elements. Continue Health Funnel until the elite is at 75%, then start casting dots, filling the felguard to full anytime he hits 50% hp. After 2 minutes you should win.

The harder ones, such as Overlord or the dual naga's in Zangarmarsh require more finesse from you, but its a fun learning experience. I won't ruin it for you, but if you die a few times only to succeed then you are better for it. Always be aware of the ground (your pet standing in stuff means it might die) and the abilities of the target in question. The south Naga has a knockback, so make sure the area is clear, or figure out how to reposition your pet (very hard, even for us experienced folk!) so he gets knocked in the correct direction. The north Naga is a caster, so be careful of the frozen circle spell. Overlord summons Infernals.


Affliction Option:
You will already be:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IfxRbubhoiA0hk
And it should look like this at level 70
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IfxRbubhoiA0hkt0Gbh
Glyphs: Siphon Life, Lifetap, Drain Soul and Unending Breath

You know how to play this, so I won't bore you with details.

One thing to note is that the transition to Outland will mean you pull fewer mobs at a time. This is because they gain more HP and hit harder (25% more each, approximately). For example, Yetis in Winterspring hit me for 250-300 or so. Bonechewer Orcs will hit you for 350-400. Your gear won't improve right away, but will improve. Just take it a bit slow until you approach 300+ spell power, then let her rip. If you already have 300+ spell power, then enjoy being a steamroller.

Unstable Affliction. Use this instead of Immolate from now on, and keep your playstyle the same.

Haunt. When you hit Northrend, the mobs jump up in difficulty again, so you will need a bit more healing. For example, fresh off the boat in Borean Tundra (Alliance) there are some flying bat things that Shadow Bolt you for ~900~ damage. That's up to 20% of your hp! Corruption, Agony, Pet. Corruption, Agony, UA. Corruption, Agony, Haunt. Life Tap once or twice so that when haunt returns it heals the taps. Repeat forever.

Elites: You will have a harder time with Elites, but don't worry too much. Skip them, move to the next zone, then come back and solo them. Send in your Voidwalker, wait until the void has 50% hp, Health Funnel once and fully DoT the mob (Elements > Agony for elites). Spam Shadow Bolt. Your pet will heal to full and you will get aggro. Keep Corruption and UA on the target, use Haunt on Cooldown once you get it, Sacrifice Shield from the voidwalker and spam Drain Life. You will win. Some fights will require more finesse on your part but learning is part of the experience.

Your final talents are up to you, but I highly recommend finishing the Demonology tree. Nothing else provides a good enough dps gain to make it worth while.

Why not Destruction?
Destruction works well in Outland, but again it's a matter of ease and learning. You already know how to play two specs, why learn a third where you single target mobs really quickly? Seriously though, if you want to play this spec for a while don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Between mana cost reduction early in the tree to Improved Soul Leech the spec is more viable now than it ever has been. The only reason its not more popular is because once you figure out Affliction... well, you've seen it in action. See the advanced section for details.

[gherkin]

The First Goal: 100 spell power by 32
This ensures that you will have zero problems leveling the rest of the way through to Outland. This is not a required number, it is a ballpark figure illustrating the important of Spell Power on your gear. Spell Power not only increases the damage you do, but also decreases the damage you take. If you can kill a mob faster, it does less damage to you. If you hit harder, Siphon Life heals proportionately more. If you have very low spell power at level 32, you will take a lot of damage, spend mana re-casting Corruption on targets that should have died already, and Life Tap more to regain this mana. It becomes very inefficient. The more you can get, the better. If you can't get 100 by 32, don't fret, but Spell Power should be the only stat you look at.

Here is a list of gear that you can get, and where to get it, by level 30. Most of it is attainable by 27. Note that there will not be Dungeon or Heirloom gear here because not everyone has uber 80's or assistance.

This is a wowhead profile I created showing easy to find gear from either the AH, Quests, or Tailoring. The profile shows 93 spell power but it is possible to have upwards of 116 using only AH, Quest, or Tailoring gear.
http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=14373828

Here is the link I used to find these items:
http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter...7;wtv=100:-100

You can make more than enough gold by simply mining Copper Ore while riding around to your farm/quest locations.
Most of the time, money should not be too much of an issue, but availability is. If you are having a hard time with finding some of these items, there are several things you can do instead.
Enchant Weapon: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=18259
Oil: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=20746 (Stacks with enchants!)

Lastly, here is one more profile fully decked out with the best you can find, including enchants. 204 Spell Power. You're a fricken beast with this much SP.
http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=14373869


Nightfall Procs:
I removed this from all of the Affliction specs posted, but some of you might feel like hitting up the talent Nightfall. It is a 4% chance to give you an instant Shadow Bolt. It has a sound effect and displays these awesome black flecks on your character. That sounds pretty bad ass, but there are some issues with doing so. Here is when using a Nightfall proc is useful:
-When you are comfortable with the amount of damage you are healing
-When you are comfortable with your current mana level
-When you want another mob to pull

Some of you may be rolling a Warlock from another class, such as Rogue. You may feel like wasting a proc is a crime due to your prior experiences. A word of caution - Nightfall makes shadow bolt an extremely attractive button to press. Try to resist this urge because like many things it can get you killed. Shadow bolt is the least efficient single-target spell in the game. (This is intentional but I won't explain why as it requires another post by itself). When spec'd correctly with sufficient gear, this is an amazing spell. Unfortunately, this is not the case while leveling. It provides a decent burst of damage but is not your main source. As such there are times to use it and times where you shouldn't. Here's a few "shouldn't" scenarios to get you thinking the correct way.

Scenario 1: You have a lot of mobs on you and are spamming drain life. Your health is slowly dropping. Sacrifice is on cooldown. Pressing shadow bolt means 2 seconds of no heals, which can be unrecoverable if your hp is low enough.
Scenario 2: You have a lot of mobs on you and are spamming drain life. Your health is fine, but your mana is low. If you cast shadow bolt, thats 2 drain life spells you no longer have the mana for. Which means you life tap. Which means 2 seconds of no heals and a chunk of your HP missing.

Play with it. If you find that you have a lot less mana than normal, then the way you just used it is not a good idea. Myself, I use it like my pet - added damage if I need the target to die a bit sooner. So if I Corruption and Agony first, the pet will do the rest of the damage. The second can have Immolate as well to do the rest of the damage. The third I can drain. The fourth I can shadow bolt if I get a proc. The rest I drain as well.


Glyphs, and why the suggestions are the right ones:
Here is a list of every possible glyph you might use in your quest to 80 and why you shouldn't use them. If you feel it in your gut that I am wrong here, I suggest you give it a go, as it just might work for you. Chances are it won't, but that's my experience talking and you need to learn If the glyph is not listed here, either you will never have that spell (Chaos Bolt) if you follow this guide, or it is a PVP glyph (Fear) which may or may not have PVE applications, but for the most part is a waste of the slot.

Corruption - More free shadow bolts means more desire to cast shadow bolt. I said above, I'll say it again. Without all the talents to prop up Shadow Bolt, it's the worst spell in the game. Casting it is stupid without the spec (usually raid spec), a loss of mana (extremely inefficient), and a loss of health (to recover the mana). More time life tapping is less time staying alive via drain life.
Curse of Agony - Mobs won't be alive longer than 24 seconds, so why extend it to 28 seconds?
Haunt - This is a raiding glyph.
Health Funnel - Just kill the things surrounding you while/before your pet tanks the elite, then you don't have to worry about pushback.
Healthstone/Soulstone - If you died, you failed. An extra 30% should not save you - this is a crutch, and you should not rely on crutches.
Immolate - Periodic damage won't tick fully to get maximum benefit from this glyph
Incinerate/Shadow Bolt - Direct damage is not how you level.
Voidwalker - He should not be getting hit.


Why Affliction will ~always~ beat out Destruction and Demonology:
Quite a simple answer, if not immediately obvious - looting. Destruction and Demo have the capability of killing a mob from range, thus forcing you to walk to it. Affliction lets the mobs beat on you, guaranteeing close proximity to loot quest items, gold, etc. Then you mount up, run into the middle of another camp, and repeat.

And since half your quests require you to walk to point A and get items B, Affliction lets you leave a trail of bodies going there for you to loot going back. Destro would force a zig zag pattern that is not efficient to retrace.


Leveling in Instances:
Not a whole lot to say here really. You will use Rain of Fire a lot. Demonology and Destruction should single-target the tank's target. Affliction should test the tank - put corruption and agony on all mobs the tank is dealing with and nuke the tank's target. If you pull aggro on anything, single target. If the tank gets mad, single target. If you don't pull aggro, keep doing it! When you get UA, replace CoA with UA. If you're Meta spec'd, have fun with Immolation aura, but ask the tank if its ok first. Not everyone leveling is capable of dealing with the threat gen of a good warlock, nor should they be.


Leveling in BG's:
This is a tremendous amount of fun. If you follow the guide, level 39 pvp might be the most fun you will have as a warlock, ever. With minimal gear you shrug off even some of the better geared twinks. With amazing gear, you can easily turn a losing battle into a dominating victory. I highly recommend you try this, as any spec. Kill healers, Paladins, and Warriors first. Rogues are trivial until they get Cloak of Shadows (level 66). Hunters hurt a lot so either deal with them immediately or stay away. Keep your HP up and use your Voidwalker for the shield.


Leveling as Destruction:
So you want to do it eh? Good on you! Destruction is extremely viable now and in the hands of the right player can surpass Demonology for speed in Northrend. Unfortunately, going from 1-40 as Destruction is extremely painful. I highly recommend you play as Affliction for as long as you can, at least to 55. When you just can't take it anymore...

Start with this:
Earliest lvl 41 spec: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IZZVcGVbMuVo
Suggested lvl 55 spec: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IZZVcGVbMuVsVsoo
Glyphs: Life Tap, Unending Breath, Drain Soul (add Conflagrate when you get the slot)
End with this:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IcZ0MZVcGVbcuVsVfot
Glyphs: Conflagrate, Life Tap, Unending Breath, Drain Soul

Playstyle: Immolate, Conflag, next target. Immolate, Chaos Bolt (replace with Shadow Bolt if you don't have it yet), next target. Repeat until OOM and dangerously low on HP (30%). Add Curse of Agony after Immolate if you need extra damage. Use Succubus as you would 30-54 Affliction. Do not drain life unless you're going to die - killing the mob and eating is faster, no matter how slow it feels. Grab food instead of water because food returns more hp than water does mp at this level, and life tap makes this more efficient.

Don't take Empowered Imp - 3 Talent Points for 3% crit or less is not very good. (Imp has 5% unbuffed, which translates into ~3% for you) Also, Imp has to stand to cast - this is the same as a Succubus or Voidwalker tanking, and we know how that part works.


Rhadatip or Pawn:
Some people use these tools to compare gear and have mentioned its use. You can download it from curse:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ails/pawn.aspx
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...s-tooltip.aspx
And the values you want to use are here:
Haste Rating=1, Crit Rating=0.7, Spirit=0.5, SpellPower=1.6, Stamina=0.5
And the copy paste code is here:

( Pawn: v1: "Warlock: Leveling": SpellHasteRating=1, SpellCritRating=0.5, Spirit=0.5, SpellPower=2.0, YellowSocket=10, RedSocket=10, BlueSocket=10, Stamina=0.5 )

( RhadaTip: "Warlock: Leveling": SpellHasteRating=1, SpellCritRating=0.5, Spirit=0.5, SpellPower=2.0, YellowSocket=10, RedSocket=10, BlueSocket=10, Stamina=0.5 )

I'm 80! Now what?
Start running dungeons. In order to queue for heroic modes, you must have an average iLVL of 175 blue gear (~187 green). Use your armory page and click the "Gear View" button just above your glove slot, and make an emphasis on upgrading anything that is green and under ilvl 150. Chances are, this will be your trinkets, wand, bracers, and cloak. These items fill those slots nicely and (fairly) cheaply:
Trinket 1: http://www.wowhead.com/item=42990
Trinket 2: 4 Quests into Icecrown http://www.wowhead.com/item=44013 (Yeah, mp5. So what, you got into the heroic, put the green one back on!)
Wand: http://www.wowhead.com/item=37824
Bracers: http://www.wowhead.com/item=35682 or http://www.wowhead.com/item=35654
Cloak: http://www.wowhead.com/item=37799

If there are more items, use this link to find suitable replacements on the AH. Otherwise, you're on your own with wowhead.
http://www.wowhead.com/items?filter=...1;crv=0:0;gb=1

Lastly, if you still have issues, you're wearing Heirloom gear! Heirloom gear is not counted as valuable as Blue gear. I would recommend:
Weapon: http://www.wowhead.com/item=41821 (Amphitheatre of Anguish - Hope you didn't sell it!) or http://www.wowhead.com/item=43871 and http://www.wowhead.com/item=37889
Shoulders: http://www.wowhead.com/item=37673 or http://www.wowhead.com/item=37196
Chest: http://www.wowhead.com/item=41554 (VERY CHEAP MATS) or http://www.wowhead.com/item=44355 (Easy quest)




A link to the original discussion which spawned this thread can be found here.

[Holynerd]

eh? <-- This is when he had all the posts as Reserved.
EDIT:
Oh thanks! i get it now.

[Deyman]

O_O WOW NICE gherkin!

EDIT: After reading it all I really have to congratulate you gherkin! this is simply amazing work by you! You just might save me a week or two (maybe three) of leveling my warlock to lvl80! ;D

[gherkin]

Added a brief word on Suppression as a talent choice in the Felguard build. Please feel free to question and comment - you would be hard pressed to offend me. If something is wrong, its wrong. If you have a different opinion on the matter, I might be able to include that.

[GrieverXIII]

WTB priest guide.

Locks are easy to lvl (my main is one)... but levelling a priest is a living hell...

[MestHoop]

WTB priest guide.

Locks are easy to lvl (my main is one)... but levelling a priest is a living hell...

Mind blast, SW:P while strafing back for GCD and then mind flay

[gherkin]

WTB priest guide.

Locks are easy to lvl (my main is one)... but levelling a priest is a living hell...

SW:P, Mind Flay x2, Wand. Add in VT when you hit 50 and Mind Blast in Northrend. Gear for spell power, keep Inner Fire up at all times, maximize Spirit Tap.

<--- 71 priest :P

[WorldTree]

Thank you very much for the soul shard Macro. It's very handy indeed. Didn't know how I could've played without it before. ;D

[darkness280]

I just started leveling a lock and i've been reading around and found your thread to be very helpful so thank you.

I just had a few questions. I have the shoulders, staff, and 2 of the sp trinkets on my lock. Would you still recommend your talent choices while leveling and respeccing when I reach the right level?

What glyphs should I be using with each tree while leveling?

[gherkin]

Heirloom gear: It depends. If you enjoy Affliction, stay affliction and work towards a 51/11/0 build. Your heirlooms will compensate for your lack of gear when you transition to Outlands, but not 100%. So if you do decide to stick it out, keep in mind that the change is intended to be a bit difficult.

Glyphs: Siphon Life first, Felguard second. Don't worry about changing out Siphon Life at 60, since you'll have it at 71 again anyways. Minor glyphs should be drain soul and unending breath. If you stick it out with Affliction, replace Felguard with Howl of Terror for survival or Haunt for a piddly dps increase. Agony will only work as a Glyph until you are geared for the area, then things are dead before the benefit kicks in. Corruption forces you to Shadow Bolt, which is mana inefficient.

[dlsf]

i have been leveled tons of warlocks, and i found that:

- level 1-50: must be afflication
- level 50-63: felguard or afflication
- level 63+: any specs are fine

- you need silphon life for lower levels, 2 dots to kill a green mobs are the fastest way to leveling, dots 8 to 10 mobs and AoE fear 5 of em, you will be very busy on looting
- felguard is good on killing elite or more safe only, very slow killing speed imo
- UA + CoA + Corruption, pull 4-5 mobs, with Soul Link is quite safe, but not enough to handle hard elites
- destruction is the most fun spec of leveling after 63 with chaos bolt and suppression (or you got + hits), you will be able to kill a same level mob with 3 or maximum 4 hits (within 5 sec), i crit for 4k chaos bolt at level 63 with green ass gear, and normal 63-64 mobs only got 5-5.5k hp. Life tap between mobs you can kill non-stop with soul leech.
- destruction weakness is handling multi / elite mobs.
- try destruction spec are lvl 63, trust me!

[gherkin]

i have been leveled tons of warlocks, and i found that:

- level 1-50: must be afflication
- level 50-63: felguard or afflication
- level 63+: any specs are fine

- you need silphon life for lower levels, 2 dots to kill a green mobs are the fastest way to leveling, dots 8 to 10 mobs and AoE fear 5 of em, you will be very busy on looting
- felguard is good on killing elite or more safe only, very slow killing speed imo
- UA + CoA + Corruption, pull 4-5 mobs, with Soul Link is quite safe, but not enough to handle hard elites
- destruction is the most fun spec of leveling after 63 with chaos bolt and suppression (or you got + hits), you will be able to kill a same level mob with 3 or maximum 4 hits (within 5 sec), i crit for 4k chaos bolt at level 63 with green ass gear, and normal 63-64 mobs only got 5-5.5k hp. Life tap between mobs you can kill non-stop with soul leech.
- destruction weakness is handling multi / elite mobs.
- try destruction spec are lvl 63, trust me!

All of this is covered except the destruction part. I agree that 3 shotting mobs in 5 seconds is fun, but I disagree that its useful. The cooldown for Chaos is 12s and Conflag is 10s. So if you just killed one mob, before you can do it again you have to wait 5s minimum, which is spent on Incinerate (don't get it until 64, sucks until 70), not killing things as fast. If people like it, do it, but the way you leveled 1-63 is just fine if you decide to continue.

[dlsf]

- get a glyph - 2 sec chaos bolt
- 10 sec CDs is reasonable for both conflag and chaos, if you actually try this you know u need to walk abit to another mob, or life tap once to gain back the mana you lost. Also you are not grinding mobs non-stop, you are probably questing.
- if anyone interested and you are level 64 or higher, try it and you won't want to re-spec to others ;D

[Goatonlb]

Walking into a camp and taking down 17 guys with always 4+ on you and ending at 90% hp and mana? Affliction is awesome.

Dual-spec for Destro, and blow some shit up just for fun, there's just no way it has the sustained dmg that Affliction does.

My biggest problem with Affliction is going back to loot the bodies as I truck through a place. At 73 I was able to solo the quest "Last Rites" as aff., but once you get into Dragonblight the "Wanted" quest elites are a bit rough on this spec - Demo here. I think everyone agrees on this point, Demo is the elite quest killer.

The transitions can be difficult between expansions if you're leveling right up through, which is what this guide is about, and yes Heirloom items will help a great deal with this. The staff + shoulders knock this difficulty in half imo.

Unending breath is a sweet glyph to have, there's enough water in Zangar alone to make you want it, not to mention the rest. Once you get Haunt you won't be swimming in shards anymore at least, the biggest difficulty here is making sure you Life-Tap before you get the heal from it, so there's no overhealing done by it. Sometimes I'll even tap before going into a fight with 4+ mobs, knowing that by the time I'll need to tap again, my HP will be at full - not wasting the Corruption + Fel Armor ticks (then Haunt) I'd be getting in the meantime.

[Nangz]

nice guide and i gotta say

That gut feeling when you think you're going to die:
Suppress it. Embrace it. Live it. A warlock lives by constantly taking damage and shrugging it off like nothing. If you aren't living dangerously, you are not a Warlock. You are a Priest or a Mage and a disgrace. If you ever feel comfortable of your survival, you are not pulling enough mobs, or are extremely overgeared for the area.

agree 100%

but i have a problem and an issue

for an average warlock ur guide rocks but considering i'm level 51 atm and i have 330 shadow spell power (holy shit level 49 warlock twink former omg)

nothing kills me anyway so would staying as affliction through outland be better? my gear will only improve but with my chants and such i won't be replacing much anyway

atm i can kill a mob generally before i can do a full drain life if i put all 3 dots on

max i've pulled at once before attacking is 12

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...ind&n=Morobert


does my gear make me the exception to the rule?

[gherkin]

At 51 with 330 spell power, it means that when you hit outland you will still have 330 spell power. You should be able to breeze through Hellfire fast enough to get the upgrades before things get too challenging (anything west of Hellfire Citadel).

Play it by ear. If you want to stay affliction, you will find a way. Remember, aim for 400 spell power as soon as possible and you should be fine.

[rfarris]

As a lvl 25 Warlock, following the talent build in the OP, I have a question about Nightfall.

If I've dotted several mobs, converted life to mana, sacrificed, and begun to drain life, and I get a Nightfall proc should I ignore it, or immediately fire off the Shadow Blast?