WoW Warlock Guide

The Warlock class is a class that deals in demonic spells and rituals. They can summon demons from the void, afflict upon their enemies various curses and diseases, and use various shadow arts to directly attack. They are best known for their very efficient damage over time spells and their amazingly strong demonic pets.

Warlock Races

Permissible races for the warlock class are restricted to Undead, Orcs, Humans, Gnomes, and Blood Elves.

Warlocks are only allowed to wear cloth armor, like many of the other magic hurling classes. Weapon-wise, they’re limited to just using staves, daggers, wands, and some swords.

Starting  Stats Strength Agility Stamina Intellect Spirit Health Mana
Blood Elves 17 22 19 26 21 42 200
Gnome 15 23 20 26 22 43 200
Human 20 20 21 22 23 53 140
Orc 23 17 23 19 25 73 109
Undead 19 18 22 20 27 63 110

Warlock Talent Builds

Afflicition Warlock: The best spec for leveling your Warlock is going to be an Affliction build.  When using this talent build you are able to fight just about non-stop while leveling without running low on mana or health. The Affliction specialization focuses on curses, drains and damage over time spells. This talent spec shines at raiding, boss killing, and farming. Affliction is commonly acknowledged as the best leveling spec for the warlock class.

Demonology Warlock: Demonology is a spec that puts a lot of reliance on your summoned pets and their damage output. You don’t do as much damage yourself, but your pet will more than make up for it. The Demonology talent tree uses talents that are designed to make summoned demonic minions more powerful and more useful, in addition to enhancing conjuring spells and giving you better passive bonuses. For PvP, Demonology is a truly great spec. For leveling, it is almost as good as Affliction. This spec can be used at lower levels to make up for a lack of good spell damage loot.

Destruction Warlock: The destruction talent build depends a lot on spells and abilities that require a cast time. In a lot of ways it’s the equivalent to being a Mage with a permanent pet. The upside of this spec is that you do massive damage, but will run low on mana pretty frequently. Destruction talents focus on enhancing most shadow and fire spells thereby making the warlock a powerful direct damage dealer. For Destruction, it is all about high damage per second (DPS) and huge crits. This specialization isn’t as effective as the others during the early levels. It requires a ton of soul shards, isn’t mana efficient, and is difficult to use effectively for people who wish to play solo.

Warlock Leveling

Leveling with a Warlock can be easy, fun, and fast, but there’s still a bazillion quests to do and mobs to kill. If you want your character to be level 80 very quickly, you need to know where you are going to, how to finish quests and you also need add-ons. This wow warlock leveling guide, will give you step by step instructions. This means that it will tell you where to go, and what quests to pick. This is the most effective way of getting a character to level 80.

Zygor’s Guide is our guide of choice. Just pick your starting point and the guide shows you where to go as well as what to do. Zygor’s automatically updates and advances as you complete quests, sets a waypoint arrow automatically, and includes all the important quest info. You will probably never need to look at your quest log again, much less browse Thottbot.

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Warlock PvP

Warlocks can be a powerful and potent force for PvP, but a little planning and skill separates a bad warlock from a great one. The similarity of the warlock class to the mage class makes it seem that the two classes would have similar PvP play styles, but this is not the case. The addition of the warlock’s pet and how his most effective spells damage the enemy call for different strategies.

The warlock should rely on his brains and spells in PvP combat as much as he does in raids, soloing, or groups. Spells like soulstone, which brings a warlock back into a fight, should be used before going into a battleground or arena, although the soulstone itself should be used when there are no enemies around the warlock.

Lifestones, potions, and band-aids work when a healer cannot heal the warlock or the healer is unavailable. In a pinch, the warlock can try using the damage over time spells to drain life from his opponents, but a combination of all these techniques work well. The best tactic is of course, not to get hit.

Warlock Pet

Pets are absolutely essential for the Warlock. Warlocks can summon many different pets. Each pet has unique abilities whether it’s an offensive attack or a defensive buff for it’s master and his group. Your first pet is an imp since Warlocks use demons as pets. Unfortunately, your first imp is pretty useless, but once you get past the tenth level, you can upgrade to a better pet that will have more skills and will be able to deal out more damage.

The Voidwalker is the probably the most common pet for a Warlock since they are very good at taking damage. You’ll get this one early on in the game but a lot of players prefer to keep them around, simply because they are so useful. Later on, you’ll be dealing with the Succubus, Fellhunter, Fellguard and the Infernal. Most will take at least one soul shard to purchase, and you won’t be able to get them until you reach specific levels. In order to get an Infernal, you’ll need to find an Infernal Stone, so keep an eye out for this as you approach level 50.

Warlock Profession

You’re not going to want to waste your time on professions like blacksmithing, skinning or fishing. The best professions for a Warlock are herbalism, enchanting and alchemy. Tailoring is also a very good choice since you will need cloths for your spell casting. It is a good idea to pick a very strong primary profession that will be supported by a secondary profession.