Warlock Leveling Guide (Level 1-60) - Talents, Rotations, Races & More

Best Demon for Warlock

The Summon Succubus / Summon Incubus is the highest DPS Demon and it's suggested to use one of them. They have the exact same abilities, Summon Succubus is Female and Summon Incubus is Male. However many people prefer the safety and tankiness of the Summon Voidwalker instead of that damage, especially. I highly recommend trying them both out to get a personal feel for which Demon you prefer.

Warlock Demon Abilities

For most of your leveling, Summon Succubus / Summon Incubus will be your best choice when you want the most damage. Summon Voidwalker is the safer option when you want your Demon to tank enemies and give you more room for mistakes or if you're on a PvP Server and you want that important Sacrifice. Summon Felhunter has very good damageonly behis mainly used for PvP, or niche uses in PvE content when you need an interrupt or a dispel.

Summon Imp is very low damage and also runs out of Mana really fast as Affliction and Destruction. The Imp performs MUCH better when Demonology because Demonic Energies will make sure it never runs out of mana and both Improved Imp and Unholy Power drastically increased it's damage. If you're Demonology and have those talents, then feel free to let the Summon Imp crank away.

Important Demon Pet Tips!

Remember to right click your pets abilities that you want them to auto cast by default. Most of them have their spells auto casted, but at times it's better to have them set to manual so you have better control over when they cast them. Summon Voidwalker's Torment is a great example. I never play with it on auto cast, instead I manually cast it and set it to CAPS lock keybind so I can easily send him on enemies to ensure the correct enemy is taunted. You can further this by macro'ing /pettattack to his Torment as well.

• Fear: Causes the enemy to run around in fear, unable to attack. All damage has a chance to break the fear.
• Howl of Terror: This is a melee range AoE fear. When in trouble, run to melee range and use this.
• Curse of Recklessness A curse that debuffs the enemy, making them take more melee damage. This is also used to stop a target from being feared. If you Fear something and it starts running into another group of enemies, you can put Curse of Recklessness on it and it will run back to you. You can also immediately cast Curse of the Elements to put the enemy back into a feared state and redirect it away from the group of enemies. This is known as "Fear Juggling" or "Babysitting Fears".
• Curse of the Elements A curse that debuffs the enemy, making them take more spell damage.
• Create Soulstone This is a buff that can be put on yourself or any other player from the same faction. When the buffed player dies, they will have the option to resurrect immediately. This works in combat.
• Create Healthstone: Stones that you can make for yourself and others. It will heal when you use it.
• Underwater Breathing Allows you or whoever you put it on breathe underwater.

Alliance: Human

Horde: Orc

Warlock have five playable races in WoW Forever. Human and Gnome remain available on the Alliance while Orc and Undead return on the Horde alongside the newly added Troll Warlock. Every race also received major racial changes, including several new active abilities that can directly affect Warlock gameplay. The racial decision is much closer than it's ever been in Classic.

The racial changes in Forever give Humans 1% Spell Crit Chance and also get 10% Spirit, which scales our Life Tap. They're not gamebreaking racials, but better than teh other options.

Horde Orc is the winner here, especially for PvE content. Blood Fury remains a very strong choice for damage that will continue to scale with us as we go throught the game. The new racial Shatter Curse brings some unique Curse and magic protection.

Undead get Touch of the Grave, giving your spells and attacks a chance to drain Health from the target, up to 5% of your maximum Health. Troll brings the infamous Berserking, which is very strong for hard casting, although as of right now DoTs, Drains, and channeled spells aren't affected by the additional cast speed. This makes Berserking significantly more appealing to Destruction than Affliction and Demonology.

Gear has changed a lot and Spell Power is now on the low level gear, giving us access to a decent amount of Spell Power already. Use the order below as a starting point while comparing items and take note that this is subject to change as we get to higher levels in the Beta and when the game launch Below, we've covered stats to look out for in order of priority, and how each stat interacts with your toolkit. Stats that aren't available on gear currently due to its low level aren't covered, but will be included as more items are released.

1. Spell Power: This is our strongest stat. Spell Power increases the damage of all of your spells.
2. Hit Chance: Reduces the chance for your spells to miss. Suppression in the Affliction can give you 5%.
3. Intellect: Our main Primary Stat. This should be on every piece of gear.
4. Critical Strike Chance: This gives you a higher chance to Crit. Since our DoTs and Hellfire can Crit, we love Critical Strike Chance.
5. Spirit: Life Tap scales off Spirit, so we like it!
6. Stamina: This gives you Health. This will naturally be on most of your gear, so you shouldn't ever have to focus on finding it.
7. Haste: This increases your casting speed, which sounds fantastic, but does not make our DoT's tick faster or effect our Drain Channels, meaning his is

Spell Power increases the damage of nearly every spell in your spellbook, but not every ability scales equally. Some spells benefit from Spell Power on their initial hit, while others receive additional damage on every tick.

The tables below show the recorded Spell Power coefficients from WoW Forever beta data for both Affliction and Demonology leveling.

Warlock Spell Coefficients

Note: Total DoT coefficients assume every tick lands. Soul Fire, Wrack, and Bane of Doom become available later in leveling and aren't usable at the Level 30 cap.

Demon Spell Coefficients

Important: Demon damage coefficients aren't necessarily calculated directly from your Warlock Spell Power. Pets inherit stats from their summoner, so their actual scaling depends on how that inheritance works. Physical melee attacks and the effects of talents such as Demonic Brand aren't quantified in this table.

What Does This Mean for Leveling?

Your DoTs benefit considerably from Spell Power, especially when enemies survive long enough for their full durations. For example, 100 additional Spell Power contributes approximately 160 damage to a full Bane of Agony and 80 damage to a full Corruption, before other modifiers.

For Demonology Spell Power also contributes to your demon's performance through stat inheritance. However, higher pet ability coefficients don't automatically mean more pet DPS. Attack speed, melee damage, talents, and how often abilities are used all matter.

Keep in mind: These coefficients come from specific beta spell records and primarily Rank 1. Higher spell ranks can have different coefficients, and some pet effects require further testing. Treat these as scaling references rather than exact DPS comparisons.

Tailoring and Enchanting are a popular starting pair for a Warlock. Tailoring gives you a use for all the cloth you'll find while leveling, including crafting extremely useful armor and bags. Half of the Best in Slot for Warlocks right now comes from Tailoring, making it highly suggested.

Enchanting lets you turn unwanted equipment into materials that you can then use to enchant your gear. Enchanting is also able to craft both Lesser Magic Wand and Greater Magic Wand. Check what the trainers actually offer before spending too much gold on a specific crafting plan. When I was leveling, I had enough money to keep one profession leveled up and had to farm some Silver to keep another profession leveled up. Warlocks typically spend more money than most classes due to having to buy Grimoires for our Demon.

First Aid is another popular option for professions because this is a secondary profession, meaning you can train First Aid and still have your two primary professions. First Aid Allows you to make very helpful bandages out of cloth to quickly heal up. With Forever, it also meansyou can make health potions, making First Aid ever more valuable. The main bandages you should be using are:

• Heavy Silk Bandage
• Mageweave Bandage
• Heavy Mageweave Bandage

WoW Forever's profession revamp allows Alchemy to make new extremely powerful potions and elixirs that will significantly boost your Spell Power, Defenses, Stats and much more. None of them require you to be an Alchemist, so you can buy all these all on the Auction House:

• Elixirs and Potions
  • Lesser Arcane Elixir: This gives you 15 Spell Power for 30 minutes.
  • Elixir of Lesser Spirit: This gives you 6 Spirit for 30 minutes.
  • Elixir of Defense: This gives you 250 Armor for 60 minutes
  • Elixir of Lesser Fortitude: This increases your Health by 120 for 60 minutes.
  • Lesser Mageblood Elixir: This lets you regenerate 6 Mana every 5 seconds for 30 minutes.
  • Lesser Trollsblood Elixir: This lets you regenerate 6 Health every 5 seconds for 60 minutes.
  • Elixir of Fire Power: This gives you 10 Fire damage for 30 minutes.
  • Elixir of Wisdom: This gives you 6 Intellect for 60 minutes.
  • Lesser Spellblasting Potion: This increases your Spell Power by 11 for 30 Seconds.
• Food buffs
  • Briny Seafood Stew: Grants 14 Spell Power and 5% more experience from kills for 15 minutes.
  • Sagefish Delight: Grants 7 Spell Power and 5% more experience from kills for 15 minutes.
• Scrolls
  • Scroll of Intellect II: Increases Intellect by 8 for 30 minutes.
  • Scroll of Protection III: Increases Armor by 180 for 30 minutes.

• A basic campfire is made with from Cooking, and at the early stage has room for three profession features, with each player contributing one. You need spend at least 60 seconds sitting or crafting nearby to pick up the benefits. Equivalent camp and class buffs do not stack, so check what you already have before looking for another camp.
• Camp Chair comes from Skinning and gives 2%. Critical Strikes for spells and attacks. Since our DoTs can critically strike, this is useful for Warlock. It is exclusive with Moonkin Form
• Faction Banner comes from Tailoring and increases Spirit, buffing your Life Tap. It is exclusive with Divine Spirit.
• Incense Candle comes from Herbalism and increases Intellect, giving you a larger Mana pool. It is exclusive with Arcane Intellect.
• Mana Well comes from Alchemy and restores Mana every 5 seconds. It gives you another way to recover Mana along side your drains and Life Tap. It is exclusive with Blessing of Wisdom.
• Fish Bowl comes from Fishing and increases all of your stats by 8%. This is extremely useful while leveling. It is exclusive with Blessing of Kings.
• Camp Tent comes from Leatherworking and brings your rested experience up to 5% of a level. It has no effect if you already have more than that amount stored.

• Keep your spells trained! Rank upgrades matter a ton, so visit your Warlock trainer regularly every two levels(2, 4, 6, 8, etc.) Check your spellbook and action bars after you train to make sure you are using the newest rank of the spell. Alternatively you can make a /cast macro to all your abilities, then you'll never need to worry about accidentally forgetting.
• Keep your armor buff active. Use Demon Skin early on and switch to Demon Armor once you train it at Level 20. These cannot be used at the same time, so it will replace Demon Skin.
• Let your DoTs finish the job. Try to avoid spending Mana on another spell when your existing DoTs are already going to kill the target. Even with Life Tap Mana is precious and the better you get at balancing your Mana and Health, the easier leveling gets. Learning when to not cast is an important part of efficient leveling.
• Use a wand! Wand attacks are extremely useful at all the way into the 30's and remain a good way to finish weakened enemies without spending additional Mana. Keep upgrading your wand as better options become available.
• Watch for Nightfall. Once you have two points in Nightfall, your damage from Corruption, Drain Life, and Drain Soul can trigger Shadow Trance. When that procs, your next Shadow Bolt is able to be casted instantly one time. Keep an eye out for this in your Cooldown Manager so you don't miss it and waste the proc.
• Use Life Tap when you have enough Health to do so safely. Starting the next pull nearly dead defeats the purpose of gaining more Mana.
• Always have Soul Shards available. Once you learn Drain Soul at level 10, use it to often to replenish your Soul Shards and try to keep some on you at all times so you can summon another demon or make another Create Healthstone, Create Soulstone or summon a friend with Ritual of Summoning.
• Ritual of Summoning is one of the most unique class abilities in the game. With 2 party members around to click the portal you can summon an ally to your location anywhere in Azeroth. You can even make some money doing this if you have some friends help you summon people to a far away location, or to help groups get their friends to their location when they don't have a Warlock. Make sure to stock up on those Soul Shards, you wont regret it!
• Keep a stack of food and water in your bags at all times. Your drains and Life Tap reduce downtime by a lot, but there will still be situations where stopping to recover is the safest and fastest option. You can buy food and water from many vendors like the General Goods Vendors located in most towns, or ask a friendly Mage to conjure some for you.
• Check your class quests. These are vital for Warlocks because this is how you unlock all of your Demons, as well as some very strong gear to help you on your leveling journey. Summon Imp is unlocked right when you start the game at Level 1. Summon Voidwalker at Level 10Summon Succubus at Level 20 as well as a Staff of Soran'ruk. Orb of Soran'ruk and your first Soul Pouch, which is used to store your Soul Shards. Lastly Summon Felhunter at Level 30 with a bigger Soul Pouch. At Level 50 you get a quest to unlock Inferno and Level 60 to get Ritual of Doom.