Warlock Leveling Guide (Level 1-30) - Talents, Rotations, Races & More

This guide shows you the recommended talents for your journey to level 30 in the WoW: Forever Beta. For Warlock, the Affliction specialization is a powerful and efficient leveling build that really shines while solo leveling.

The Warlock's damage over time spells, in combination with their Life Tap and Drain Life, as well as the damage and protection provided by your active Demon Pet, will make rotting the enemies you face in the open world an easy task. The protection that Summon Voidwalker provides by holding an enemy's threat, coupled with the Warlock's Fear ability, also ensures that even if an enemy does eventually decide to attack you, any damage you suffer will be minimal.

Warlocks start off quite strong even without their Demon Pet. To start off, you will be using Shadow Bolt, and applying Immolate, alongisde other DoTs like Corruption and Bane of Agony (previously Curse of Agony).

Affliction will be our recommended specialization for the 1-30 grind. It will provide the most efficient leveling journey, as Warlocks have interchangeable resources, sacrificing their health for mana with Life Tap and gaining it all back with Drain Life and Siphon Life.

Your first talent points are an easy choice, we will be starting off with 5/5 Improved Corruption. This is a no-brainer for Affliction Warlocks, as this will take your Corruption spell from a 2 second cast to an instant cast.

We will spend the following points in 3/3 Improved Drains. This particular talent has had a great rework and is a lot stronger than it was in Classic WoW. Sustain is key as it means less time drinking and more uptime leading to faster leveling.

After that, we'll take 2/5 Suppression to greatly improve our chance of landing spells against enemy targets around a similar level. This also lowers the threat generated by Affliction spells, perfect for keeping mobs focused on your pet.

Next, we'll take 3/3 Fel Concentration for a 70% chance to avoid spell pushback when taking damage. This is a really strong talent. As a Warlock, you have the capability to fight 2-3 enemies at a time, so this will keep damage up and health regeneration consistent throughout all situations.

We'll then take 2/2 Improved Bane of Agony, which provides a 10% increase in damage for this spell.

Our next talent points will be spent in 2/2 Nightfall. This gives us a 4% chance to proc an instant Shadow Bolt when our enemies take damage from Corruption, Drain Soul or Drain Life

Then comes an iconic Affliction spell, Siphon Life. This provides extra damage and sustain and adds to your collection of DoTs!

Finally, one last trip back up the talent tree, because we are getting 3/3 Pandemic. DoT and drain spells can crit in WoW: Forever, which is a dramatic change from the Classic WoW we know. This talent increases the critical strike damage of these spells by a massive 100%.

A closing thought on our talents: there is an argument to be made for taking 5/5 Malediction, which gives an extra 5% damage for our periodic spells. However, those 5 points being spread into our hit chance and threat reduction with Suppression, and crit from Pandemic, are too good to ignore early on.

Every race has its own strengths. There are definitely no bad choices when it comes to picking a race, so feel free to choose whichever race you feel is the best match for you. If we had to make one recommendation for each faction, we'd suggest the Gnome for Alliance and the Orc for Horde, unless Undead’s Touch of the Grave ends up being notably stronger than expected.

Gnomes' new racial ability, Eureka! will certainly be an enormous boost for Warlocks of any spec in PvE, as when activated it reduces the mana cost of your next 3 spell casts and increases damage and/or healing by 10%. Perfect for a bit of extra power while also being efficient!

Orc’s previous racial which boosted Pet damage has been removed, but with the new spell power benefit to Blood Fury and Shatter Curse for a defensive cooldown, they should still remain the top choice for Warlocks.

The primary skills you'll use whilst leveling are Corruption, Bane of Agony, Immolate, and Drain Life, while also using Fear if you need to, and Shadow Bolt with any instant cast procs from Nightfall.

1. Command your Summon Voidwalker to attack the mob first, it will taunt automatically

2. Apply your DoTs to the target. Start with Immolate, into Bane of Agony and Corruption.

3. Follow up by using Life Tap once or twice to regain mana

4. Drain Life the target, damaging the enemy while returning the HP you lost and regaining mana

5. If the mob begins to attack you over your Demon, Fear it away to create space

6. Execute the target with either Drain Life or Drain Soul, depending on your health and/or Soul Shard situation

7. When the target begins to weaken, send your Demon pet to pull the next mob and repeat the process

8. Don't forget to weave in the instant-cast Shadow Bolt procs from Nightfall for some big damage

Fighting mobs as a Warlock does not have to be a one-by-one process. Once your pet has aggro on your first target and you have DoTs up, feel free to pull a second mob and control its distance with Fear.

Always make sure to visit your Class Trainer often so you don't miss out on powerful upgrades as you level, especially at level 10, when you'll traditionally be given a quest to learn how to summon the Voidwalker. This demon is pivotal to level efficiently as an Affliction Warlock.
Don’t forget to check out the Demon Trainers when you pop by your warlock trainer too. These can provide powerful abilities that will make your leveling journey more efficient.

Warlocks can use wands, so make sure to keep an eye out for one, whether from a quest reward or purchased from a vendor. They offer steady damage at no mana cost and will drastically increase your uptime.

Always keep your Soul shards topped up in your bags! These are used for Summon Voidwalker, Create Healthstone, Ritual of Summoning and more.

1. Spell Power for increased damage and healing

2. Stamina for extra health which you can use to generate mana with Life Tap.

2. Intellect for an increased mana pool and spell critical strike

3. Spirit for health and mana regeneration

Warlocks have always been a standout class when it comes to raids and dungeons.

As a Warlock, always have your Summon Imp up for the group's health bonus from Blood Pact.

Affliction Warlocks can apply full DoTs to the tank's main target, then AoE the rest with Rain of Fire. Just watch your threat.

Keybind your Demon pet's Attack and Passive mode commands for better control.

Keybind your pet's most useful abilities, for example, Voidwalker's Sacrifice or Succubus' Seduction for fast, easy defence and crowd control

Always keep an eye on your Demons behaviour, many difficult situations can be avoided with good use of pet control.

Pet opener 

#showtooltip Immolate

/petattack

/cast Immolate

Pet ability macro

#showtooltip

/cast [known:Sacrifice] Sacrifice

/cast [known:Spell Lock] Spell Lock

/cast [known:Fire Shield] Fire Shield

/cast [known:Seduction] Seduction

Mouseover Fear

#showtooltip

/cast [@mouseover,exists,harm][] Fear

Rain of Fire Cast on Cursor

#showtooltip

/dismount

/cast [@cursor] Rain of Fire