1. Get to 80. There’s no sense trying to maximize your DPS before 80. You don’t have all the tools, you don’t have all the gear. When you’re questing you need to kill quest mobs. Quest mobs don’t have enrage timers.. so as long as you don’t die you’ll be fine. Frankly you need more stamina and survivability than DPS. So just stop worrying about it an enjoy the leveling experience.
2. Glyph for success. Make sure you’ve chosen the proper glyphs. At this time the best affliction major glyphs to maximize your DPS are Life Tap, Haunt, and Quick Decay. The minor glyphs are -so- minor they in fact have no effect so choose whatever blows your hair back.
3. Spec like you mean it. I believe at this time the “best” affliction spec is 56/00/15 with a little bit of wiggle room.
– if you have the gear to make up the hit you can justify taking up to 3 points out of Suppression and putting them elsewhere.
– The two points in Improved Drain Soul and the one point in Improved Life Tap do not directly add to your DPS. Indirectly the 10/20% reduced affliction threat can add to you DPS if you are threat capped by your tank. The 10/20% returned mana can add to your dps because over the long run they will save you GCDs by not having to life tap as much. You could argue that those points could be moved elsewhere.
Other than those points I don’t see any other points that can be moved in this spec.
4. Choose your pet wisely. If it’s not on cooldown you should summon your Doomguard. If doomguard is on cooldown then summon Felhunter. Then, for the last 60 seconds of the fight (or if your pet dies) call down an Infernal to replace your current pet. Recommended reading: My pet’s better than your pet
5. Buff to the best benefit. For max DPS you should always have your Fel Armor up and a Spellstone applied to your weapon. For flasks choose the Flask of the Frost Wyrm. For food go for +hit food if you’re under hit cap, otherwise choose +spellpower food. Celebrate the fact that we’re one of the few class for whom fish feast actually -are- the best food to choose.If you won’t pull threat, then pre-pot on the fight. This will allow you to get the effect of two potions during combat. I normally pre-pot with a Potion of Speed.
If there’s a shaman in the raid pop Potion of Wild Magic during the Heroism/Bloodlust.
If there isn’t a shaman in the raid pop Potion of Speed at the point where you would normally do Heroism/Bloodlust.

The makeup of your raid, and the buffs each class bring to the raid will greatly influence your dps. Keep this in mind when comparing your dps in different raids.
6. Make sure you’re always hitting the mobs. In a raid you need to make up 17% hit(464 hit rating). In heroics you need to make up 6% hit(168 hit rating).Generally you will get best return by speccing into Suppression and the making up the last 14% from hit rating (368 hit rating) on gear. You can possibly justify only getting 10% hit if you can count on raid buffs (3% from misery from Spriest OR 3% Imp Fairy Fire from druid) and the presence of a Draenei (1%).. personally I hate the idea that I could be 4% below hit cap in the raid if the persons who provide the buffs died (or don’t show up) so I normally gear for the full 14%.
7. Hit the mobs harder/faster. When you’re gearing, make sure you’re maximizing the right stat. For affliction warlocks at the moment your stats, in order of importance, are:
Spellpower/Haste > Spirit/Crit >> int > everything else

Once you get to the hit cap hit rating is no longer valuable (I still pick up +hit items and keep them in my bank for swapping gear around), but until you get to the hit cap, hit is -the- most valuable stat. After that Spellpower is valued slightly higher than haste which is valued higher than spirt/crit. Last is int which only shows up on the list because it grants a smidge of crit.
8. Choose the right curse for the job. Choose Curse of the Elements if you’re in a group that does not have a Boomkin to provide “Earth and Moon” or an Unholy Deathknights to provide “Ebon Plague” (yes, CotEl in this case will improve your personal DPS). Choose Curse of Agony if the mob will live for greater than 20 seconds and the 13% granted by CotEl is covered by another class. Choose no curse if another class is covering the 13% buff from CotEl and the mobs die in < 20 seconds.
9. All mobs (and mob packs) are not created equal.
If there are 3+ trash mobs in a pull.. and your tanks generate good AOE threat:
Seed of Corruption multiple mobs. (seed, tab, seed, tab, seed, tab, etc) Rain of Fire does less DPS but is more consistent and may be preferable if you outgear your tank or if the group of mobs are going to die too quickly to get 3+ seeds cast.

Single/Double Trash rotation: (trash dies too quickly to get a full dot rotation on them).
Haunt, Corruption, Shadow Bolt until dead. (Drain Soul if you need soul shards). Sometimes it may even be better to just spam Shadow Bolt (or Searing Pain) especially on -very- quick dying trash.

Boss/high-HP trash, use a full rotation.

Double Boss/high-HP trash, use a rotation on both. Haunt/Corruption/UA/Curse/Shadow Embrace on one and Corruption/UA/Curse/Shadow Embrace on the other. This is difficult and should be practiced.
10. Cast your spells in the right order and refresh in a timely manner.
Startup:
If on CotEl duty cast CotEl first. Follow up with Shadow Bolt and Haunt to stack your Shadow Embrace buff (This will change when Shadow’s Embrace changes to 3 stacks. At that point the startup may be Shadow Boltx2, Haunt.). Then Corruption, (CoA, if no CotEl), Unstable Affliction, then Shadow Bolt until Haunt is off cooldown.

Refresh priority:
1. (CotEl) (if it drops)
2. Haunt(whenever it’s off CD to refresh Haunt buff and Corruption)/Lifetap (to keep lifetap buff up or for mana)
3. Corruption (if it drops)
4. Unstable Affliction
5. (CoA) (if you’re not on CotEl duty)
6. If nothing else, Shadowbolt

During the last 25% of the mob:
1. Haunt (should also keep up your Shadow’s Embrace effect)
2. Corruption (if it dropped)
3. Drain Soul. Note that the channeling of Drain Soul should be interrupted after a tick to refresh #1 or #2.
11. Do not clip your dots. That is, do not cause a new dot to land on the mob before the last tick of the dot that’s already ON the mob goes off.Corruption: if you’re doing it right it will never fall off because of Everlasting Affliction. If it accidentally -does- fall off then just recast it as soon as you can.Unstable Affliction has a 1.5 second cast time(effected by haste)(in Red, with an X across it). This means that you should start casting UA when there’s <1.5 seconds left in the dot. You don’t want to start early as you’ll overwrite the last tick and lose dps. You’ll get the most dps if you can get the cast off as early as possible without overwriting the dot.

Haunt is kind of special. It’s barely a dot as it does minimal damage. Really it’s there because of the boost it gives to your other shadow dots. You have ~4 seconds in which to refresh it (after it comes off cooldown but before it drops). Anytime within those 4 seconds is fine. For highest DPS you should hold off until it’s 1.5 seconds away from dropping. That way in a full boss fights you have it up the most but spend the least time refreshing it.

If you’re using Curse of Agony, it’s instant and its last tick is really powerful so you do not want to overwrite it. So do not cast CoA until it has fallen off the mob but cast it as soon after it falls off as possible.
12. ABC. Always Be Casting. Anytime you’re not casting you’re losing dps. While moving you can cast corruption, curse, life tap or Death Coil. Do it!Also make intelligent use of you Demonic Teleport to minimize the amount of time you are wasting in moving around.
13. Practice practice practice.

So, once you’ve done ALL of the above, if you’re STILL having DPS issues then I would blame either poor execution or latency. Examine a parse of a boss fight and check on your dot uptime. More dot uptime equals more DPS.

Cutting down on Latency is something I’ll address in another article.. it’s not quite done yet

Keep in mind also.. in some cases it’s better to -not- win the dps meter. For example in a large mob pack pull with a healer in the pack you will maximize your dps by seed spamming the whole lot but this will allow the healer to stay up for a long time and to keep healing. In some cases it would be better for the overall raid for you to single target the healer FIRST and then change to seed spamming. Sometimes the needs of the many overcome the DPS maximizing of the few.

As I said in the 10-40 guide, you can place your talents all over the place and still have a lot of fun. This is certainly true if you focus on one tree in particular. The tree we focused on in that article was affliction, the reason being that it is considered the quickest leveling build until around the 50+ mark. We left you with this build as an example of something to work to at level 40, this can be continued to level 49 with this setup:

Example level 49 affliction build.

This is very much an example and you can move a lot of the points about as you see fit to work with your play-style and preference. At level 50 you have a choice to make. Do you want to carry on with affliction or swap over to demonology and get a felguard?

If you decide to stay with affliction then you can learn Unstable Affliction which is another DoT and a really nice spell. When I say ‘nice’ I’m referring to how I think it’s a very warlock-y spell, especially with its dispel mechanic. It also is a requirement for Pandemic, which is also a great talent.

Moving over to demonology and getting yourself another pet is the ’standard form’ though some suggest waiting until you can support the build with talents from another tree (to boost your own damage). Personally I don’t think that’s necessary. You may be a little nerfed but since you have just swapped spec it’s probably a good idea to spend some time cleaning up some green quests while you learn the new setup.

The felguard will be the subject of a meet the minions article before long but briefly, for those who have never had one before, he does more damage than any of your other minions (only exception is the doomguard but you have to wait till 60 for him), generates more threat than a voidwalker and is almost as hard to kill. This makes him a great front-man to your background machinations. I was uncertain about the guy to begin with but after a very short time I came to really enjoy having him around; both for solo and party/raid work.

If you do want to swap to demonology at 50 here’s an example build that will make your new demon nice and strong.

Example level 50 demonology build.

For those of you going with destruction at this point you will have found that you can now reach Shadowfury. There are those that love this spell and while I agree that it is great fun to use and opens up a number of cool tricks, it’s generally too much bother for me to worry about. If you enjoy it then go for your life, it’s very cool, but I wouldn’t worry if you find yourself under-whelmed by it.

Spells

What happened to all the new spells? Between levels 11 and 40 you gain 25 brand new spells to cast, but between 41 and 60 there are 5. You do get a lot of spell upgrades however, so it’s still worth going back to the trainer often. I’ll add the spells from talents below as well.

* Level 42 – Death Coil – Sometimes referred to as ‘Skill Coil’ by those who look on it as a warlock ‘I WIN’ button. This is pretty unfair as most classes have something that takes their opponent out of the game for a short time and many have more than us locks. That said, it’s a great panic button with a ‘run-away’ effect that is short enough to use in tight spaces without calling down the fury of every mob in the area.
* Level 48 – Soul Fire – Without Decimation this is a spell that tends to get dusty in the back of the spell book. With Decimation, it covers the execute phase with great big fiery balls of crit.
* Level 50 – Inferno – You fight not just this warlock alone but the legions he commands! Summon forth meteors from the heavens to smite your enemy and raise up rock-demons terrify the populous. Well, that’s what it’s like in my head but you can read the last Blood Pact for what it’s really like.
* Level 50 minimum – Unstable Affliction – An awesome extra DoT with a sting in its tail.
* Level 50 minimum – Summon Felguard – New and hugely powerful minion to play with.
* Level 50 minimum – Shadowfury – AoE, ranged and damaging stun. A lot of fun if a little novelty/situational.
* Level 60 – Ritual of Doom – Summon the most powerful demon available to players; but only if you have been on a long and arduous quest, have four other people with you and remembered to go to the shops beforehand. Great spell, sadly too much hassle for too little gain. Also a topic of last week’s Blood Pact.
* Level 60 – Curse of Doom – The spell that does the highest damage in a single strike and has the best damage-per-execute-time as well. Unfortunately your enemies have time to make tea and buttered crumpets between cast and damage. So unless this fight is going to take some time you don’t need this spell.

Gear

No real change in the gear during this phase in leveling as it’s still almost all Old-world stuff. Check out the last piece for a bit more detail. When you reach level 58 you are eligible for the Outland quests which will start throwing massive (though somewhat ugly) upgrades at you; so don’t go investing in anything expensive in the latter half of the 50s.

Instances

Scarlet Monastery is probably getting a bit old for you now so Zul’Farrak, Maraudon and Sunken Temple should do you through the 40s with Blackrock Depths, Dire maul, Blackrock Spire (lower first, then maybe upper later), Scholomance and Stratholme through the 50s. Don’t feel you have to go into these places if you like to play solo but they can get some nice upgrades, complete some nice quests and also teach some important warlock skills.

PvP / Balltlegrounds

If you like. I wouldn’t, but don’t let that stop you. Apparently there are lots of mages there that you can kill, so can’t be all bad.

Final note

While playing about on Wowhead for this article I stumbled across a poem about the felguard that seems to be written by a disgruntled DPS warrior. Worth a read if you have the time.

Infernal

A favorite from the Warcraft RTS games, this guy is partly responsible for many players selecting their first warlock. He appeared on the original WoW cinematic looking all ‘ard and then climbing a tower to eat a mage. Those who quest in Desolace in their 30s encounter them in a pleasantly demonic zone. We also find them causing much disruption when we first arrive in Shadowmoon Valley. Strangely though, many locks don’t bother to do the quest to summon their own. I expect this is related to their general lack of utility, but it probably also has something to do with being available at the same time as the felguard talent.

Level 50 is a busy time for warlocks; you have your mind on changing talent build to get the felguard (as recommended by typical leveling guides), you have your Sunken Temple quest to think about (always worth doing at 50) and you have the infernal to learn to summon. Luckily for us the troll and infernal quests come from the same awesome little imp. Impsy can be found stood beside his less interesting ‘master’ (Niby the Almighty) in Felwood, just North of the Bloodvenom Falls. In case you were wondering, yes, Niby does make a return in Icecrown Citadel, where he will sell you your tier 10 gear.

The Infernal quest line starts with Niby but all he does is tell you to talk to his imp. Impsy will in turn send you off to gather three items that drop from demons in Felwood, Azshara and The Blasted Lands. He’ll turn these into a Fel Fire with which you can reignite Kroshius, then you nip off to resurrect and subsequently kill Kroshius. This shouldn’t be too tricky as he’s no longer an elite, he used to be pretty hard to solo or would require a group to kill. Bring back his core, watch a funny skit involving a chicken and receive an off-hand item and the ability to cast Inferno. You can actually learn the spell from a book that drops in Blackrock Spire but the drop rate isn’t great and why would you want to avoid visiting Impsy?

Inferno is one of the few warlock spells that require a reagent (other than a soul shard) so make sure you keep a few of these if you want to cast it. Summoning the infernal is different to your normal minions, rather than casting a long spell you aim a reticule on the ground at which point a meteor will fall from the sky, stun those around and from the crater will rise your infernal. He’s a pretty unsubtle fellow who has no special abilities to use and simply clomps up to things and hits them hard. He does have a passive immolation aura and complete immunity to fire spells which can be quite nice in the right situation (should you find yourself surrounded by lots of little guys casting fire spells for example).

After one minute your infernal will simply crumble to rubble. Historically he was only enslaved and so when his time came he would break free and attack you or anyone else that annoyed him; this is where he got his bad name.

Doomguard

There is actually two ways to summon a Doomguard. One is to kill something with Curse of Doom, though it has to be something you would get experience for. The easiest things to do this on are elementals and demons as you can cast CoD then Banish them, followed by a rank one Banish; that should keep them busy until the CoD pops. A Doomguard summoned in this way is free and will attack you so make sure you are ready to Enslave it.

The other way to summon a Doomguard is through the Ritual of Doom. This also needs a reagent as well as four other people to click the portal. In days gone by the ritual would kill one of the people performing it (no durability loss) but for some reason this was seen to be a bad thing. Now one person only loses some health, so no fun there. Once summoned in this way he is automatically enslaved for 15 minutes with no chance of breaking free. After that time he just despawns.

The doomguard is a pretty powerful demon and as such has been used a fair bit by affliction locks. The reason only afflocks have used him is simply because until recently (patch 3.3) they don’t get any real benefit from their minion. Demonology locks will lose way too much DPS without their felguard and the same is true of destruction and their imps. Now that felpuppies buff affliction locks nicely the Doomguard has no place in raids once again.

The ritual of Doom spell can also be learned from a book but the drop rate is still not too good, I would recommend the quest chain that will also teach it. You need to go and see Daio the Decrepit in the North of the Tainted Scar (SW Blasted Lands), and pick up the quests The Prison’s Casing and The Prison’s Bindings. The first will require killing mobs in the southern part of Winterspring; this will be easy at 80 but at 60 (when the quest is available) I strongly recommend you take a friend or two. The second quest requires a trip to Dire Maul, again, at 80 this is easy enough but at 60 you will want a group. The easiest (quickest) way to the mobs you need in DiM is through the back door in the pavilion with the sad elf. Once you have done these quests you can do Suppression which again is a group thing at 60. These quests are steeped in warlock-juice and so great fun to do.

The doomguard himself has three abilities: War Stomp, Cripple and Rain of Fire. They’re all pretty useful though he doesn’t like using them much himself so you might need to command him to use them when appropriate. He also hits pretty hard and has a massive health and mana pool. He sounds really useful but frankly, with the effort required to summon him, the massive cooldown between uses and the fact that you can’t have any other (more useful) minion while he is out makes him a novelty demon.

Both these guys are, to my mind, in dire need of a revamp for Cataclysm. It seems to me that they were introduced more from a role-play “wouldn’t this be cool” angle than from any serious attempt to add something to the warlock class they would use. The Doomguard utility in early Wrath raiding was more a failure of any other minion to be worth using rather than any great strength of its own and the cooldown meant that you could only use him some of the time. The big problem they suffer from is not benefiting from any of the lock talents. In this respect they behave more like guardians than minions. This isn’t a terrible thing in its own right but if they aren’t going to behave like our minions then I don’t think they should replace them.

I would like to see these guys used more like the shaman fire elementals. Those moments when you just want to get out a bit more burst, maybe you’re looking at a 1% wipe or a group of adds has just broken loose (many whelps…). Your minion should still be doing their thing but for a short while you call in the big guns. Not something to use every fight, that would become a boring ‘rotation’ thing, but just a little something extra now and then. Failing that, you should certainly have your minion returned to you when they despawn and not have to resummon them again. That way the infernal and doomguard could be used mid-fight.

As I’ve said before, I would love to see warlock minions become more diversely used; a minion for a job, not for a talent build. We have learned to reach through into the nether and pull forth diverse demons to do our bidding, demons that are specialists in different situations; it’s such a shame to only use one for every job.

Lord Marrowgar

Time to dance with the bone lord. There are a couple things to avoid here. First is the boss himself when he spins around and drunkenly staggers all round the room. He moves pretty quickly so there’s actually little chance of avoiding him completely but it’s not a bad idea to try and minimize the damage you take from him. This ability is called Bone Storm and is well announced, spreading out from others will reduce the chances of you getting hit while he molests someone else. The second thing to get out the way of is Coldflame. He’ll be sending out four lines of blue fire frequently throughout the fight, radiating away from him. This happens even when he’s spinning about the place. Simple and fundamental rule of raiding — don’t stand in the stuff on the floor.

You can completely avoid Coldflame between Bone Storms by standing close behind him, since they spawn just a little way out. This position is normally held by the melee and possibly the healers so you might not be welcome (more people means more risk when he starts to spin). If you are allowed to stand in there then a Circle might be a good idea to get back out fast.

After each Bone Storm his threat list is wiped, so you want to pay attention to your DoTs, especially Curse of Doom. Make sure you allow your tanks a chance to pick him back up and reposition him before nuking away.

The last thing you need to think about is the Bone Spike Graveyards. These get thrown on raid members semi-randomly and need to be targeted and killed very quickly. Melee should really be dealing with any that appear amid their ranks but ranged DPS need to deal with the others. I found that tab-targeting was fine but you might want to put together a macro that gets you onto the target more quickly; something like:

/stopCasting
/tar Bone
/petattack
/cast Immolate

These should be going down in pretty short order so use a burst damage rotation. For destro locks it’s the same as your normal one so carry on. Affliction and demo locks should just spam Shadow Bolts (swap to Soul Fire if you get the chance).

Lady Deathwhisper

I find this the most interesting fight open in Icecrown Citadel so far but there’s still little that is specific for a lock. I’m not about to fill this article with all the mechanics of the boss and the adds, you’ll have to go look them up elsewhere (Wowhead or Wowwiki for example). The basics I will cover however. Phase one sees the boss put up a mana bubble that means damage done to her diminishes her mana; when it’s all gone we enter phase two. Don’t try to use Drain Mana, you will do far more if you just do normal damage.

During phase one a load of adds will spawn, don’t get anywhere near them, they really hurt. You can’t do any damage to the casters, so if you’re not assigned to nuking the boss stick to killing the melee adds. If one comes for you then kite it away and let everyone else deal with it. It’s worth spreading out somewhat as sometimes the casters spells splash from their targets. If you have a melee pet I suggest putting it on the boss the whole time.

During phase two you can just nuke the boss, this is a pretty easy tank-and-spank phase, the only thing you really need to be aware of is not standing in the green stuff, but that’s true of phase one as well. Make sure all adds from phase one have been cleared up before turning onto her.

On the 25 man version she also casts Dominate Mind every so often. I found that Fear was a good defense against this as it’s duration was about the same. Range is a bit of an issue but by standing in the middle of the raid you can fear almost anyone that gets dominated. I used Grid to see who had the debuff and a mouse-over macro to fear them quickly. They are buffed while dominated so can quickly pose a threat.

#showtooltip Fear
/stopCasting
/cast [target=mouseover,harm,exists] [harm,exists] Fear
/focus [target=mouseover,harm,exists] [harm,exists]

That macro lets you just hover your mouse over the dominated character’s unit frame and press the keybind for the macro. I added the focus line so I could more easily track if the Fear dropped off.

Gunship Battle

This is a pretty easy encounter if people stick to their jobs, but it can get hectic if not. Before the fight have a word with the Zafod Boombox (“He’s just this goblin, you know?”) and get the Goblin Rocket Pack. Add this to your hotbar and equip it (it goes in the shirt slot). This can be used to jump between ships, it’s worth having a practice before the fight starts. Watch out for any practical-joker priests putting levitate on you, it’s all too easy to overshoot the edge of the ship… you might want to suggest Slow Fall to the mage, see what happens.

Since you have the awesome Rain of Fire spell you will probably be told to stay on your own ship and just AoE down the mobs that board it. If so just do this and dodge rockets. Runes will appear on the floor where rockets are about to land so stay sharp.

If you are put onto a cannon (not a great idea if you are demo) then use the ability bound to ‘1′ to shoot the closest mobs on the other boat and build up heat. This heat is indicated on your pet (the cannon) mana bar. Don’t let the heat reach 100 but when it’s nice and high you can use the other ability (number ‘2′) to fire a high-damage ability and dump all the heat. That ‘1′ button can be mashed really fast, so go for your life. Also, build up a good bit of heat before you start the fight, to speed things up a little.

The only other job you might get is to board the enemy ship. If so then you want to kill the mobs on the far side of the ship most of the time. Every so often a mage will step into the middle of the ship and freeze your cannons. Oh yes, you guessed it, you kill the mage as a priority to everything else. Yay! Don’t worry about the other boat’s captain; they just need to be tanked out of the way to keep him busy. That tank may need to have a break from getting hit for a while, as the captain gains a stacking buff. This is done by everyone jumping back to their own ship. If he doesn’t hit anyone for about twenty seconds the stacks drop off and you can carry on. Be sure not to get back over to their boat until it’s safe to do so (not even to get that pesky mage) as one hit from the captain will reset the counter on his buff (and kill you).

I never actually spent any time on the other ship so can’t tell you if Circle works for a quick return, but I expect it does and it certainly sounds like a good idea to me. That said, the rocket packs are fun.

Deathbringer Saurfang

Another great fight and one that seems to cause some problems though it doesn’t need to, everything is quite manageable. As ranged DPS you need to stand as far from the boss as you can and nuke (easy so far), then when the adds spawn, you turn on them and nuke them till they all die (still pretty easy). The tricky part is making sure that the adds never touch you. This is done by killing them before they reach anyone — either by killing them really quickly or by slowing them down. Frost traps, and earthbind totems are commenly employed for this second option, but your Conflag stun and (should you have it) Shadowfury can also help. Listen to the raid leader on how this will be managed but do everything you can not to get hit at all.

Here’s why: Every time one of Saurfang’s abilities, or one of those of his adds, does any damage he gains energy. When he has enough energy he applies a really nasty DoT to a random raid member. This will in turn also give him energy, so he starts to gain energy faster and apply more DoTs. The people with DoTs are about as hard to heal as the tanks so your healers start sweating and people might die. This is always bad but when the boss gains 5% health back each time someone dies (Saurfang does by the way) it’s horrible.

Liberal use of Power Word: Shield around the raid helps a ton, but generally avoiding the beasties is the key. That and letting someone die… Not the normal way of doing things but actually letting the first person to get Mark of the Fallen Champion die is usually worth it (even if they are a healer). Don’t be upset if that’s you, but do send out a silent prayer for it to be the mage. Also, don’t put a Soulstone on the marked person, while that sounds like a great idea the mark persists through death so they will just come back as a liability, die again and give the boss another hit of %5 health.

So it comes down to slowing the adds, kiting them if needs be (smart use of Circle again) and nuking the boss in between. Stick to direct damage on the adds as they are almost immune to AoE. Keep yourself safe and look forward to some nice tier tokens.

If you get all through that and summon your Felhunter at level 30 then he’ll only know the one trick, that’s Devour Magic. This is a cool little trick that will either remove a magic debuff from a friendly character or a buff from an enemy. When soloing a nice macro to target the ability is:

/use [target=player][target=pet][]Devour Magic

This will try and take a debuff from you, failing that from himself, failing that it’ll try and take a buff from your target. As an extra bonus, every magic effect he devours will heal him up a bit. This can come in pretty handy when questing alone and you come up against a caster.

The only time I have actively used this ability in a raid situation was in Karazhan (Maiden of Virtue), mostly having the ability on auto-cast is sufficient.

At level 32 your Felhunter will learn Fel Intelligence. This is where a lot of the ‘lock utility’ that was mentioned in the first paragraph was coming from. It’s true, this is a nice party buff if your party doesn’t include a priest or a mage, but does include several other casters. I don’t find myself in that situation very often and to be honest this buff is just a little extra love from the puppy when you have him out for some other reason.

Level 36 sees him learn Spell Lock. This is a hugely valuable ability in PvP (so I’m told) and in PvE it’s kinda nice too. When you’re fighting a caster you can use this to shut them up completely. Often this means that they come up to you and hit you with laughably puny mage-fists. All the while you are tearing their body and soul asunder with shadow and flame. Nice.

Again though, in a raid this ability is pretty useless. I have only had it manually cast once, again back in Kara on Aran. Since then I’ve used the puppy on Faction Champions where he’s great for pestering the healers (especially the one-school paladin), but that was just a case of using auto-cast once more.

The stock answer for what talent tree to use when leveling a lock is “Affliction till 50 then demonology till 80″. This is a fair guide and you’ll not go far wrong with it. It’s quite possibly the fastest and/or easiest way to go. The problem I have with it is that there is so much variety in the warlock talents that being this formulaic is missing out on a lot. Also, leveling through the early stages is so quick and easy these days that it’s a perfect opportunity to experiment. So if you want to dump points into anything that takes your fancy then go for it, I say. You can always pay to change them later.

That said, some of you are sat there shouting “To hell with fun, I want my lock to be 80 NOW! Tell me the quick way.” So I shall. Destruction can get some very quick kills but leaves you kinda drained after each one. Demonology gives some solid minions but doesn’t pack that much of a punch. Affliction has decent damage output with excellent resource regeneration; this makes it highly efficient over the long haul.

You’ll probably be using your voidwalker (certainly at the start) so while he tanks you want to DoT the mob up with CoA, Corruption and Immolate. Use CoA first as it lasts the longest and lets him build up some threat. The idea with the void is to let him take the pain, so slow and steady damage on the target keeps them on him. If you Life Tap before you engage (to full mana) and then place DoTs you can then recover the health with Drain Life. If you find that mobs are dying before all your DoTs have run their course, then consider not casting one of them or taking on two mobs at once. Mobs dying before DoTs run out is not the worst thing in the world but it is a waste of mana; this can slow you down.

Given that you’ll be DoTting a load, Improved Corruption is a handy talent to pour points into and Improved Life Tap and Soul Siphon also works well with this strategy (Immolate is a destruction spell so doesn’t count for Soul Siphon). Improved Drain Soul can help your voidwalker hold threat and also give you a nice mana boost if you time it right — some people swear by this talent, but I’m less of a fan, it’s not bad but if you don’t need it then look elsewhere.

Suppression is great for attacking mobs of a higher level, but if you prefer to level through ‘green’ quests then you might not need this. I prefer to be killing stuff as hard as I can manage and so Suppression is great. You should be looking to get Siphon Life as soon as you can, this used to be just another DoT with some healing but it was re-worked a while back and is simply awesome now. After that you want to stack points into Shadow mastery, also a very powerful talent. How you fill in the gaps is up to you but by level 40 you will probably end up with something like this.

    Example level 40 affliction build

You can play about with many of the filler talents as you like and feel your play style dictates. I prefer Grim Reach to Improved Fear as I like to keep plenty of distance and it’s all very well slowing a previously feared mob but the friends he ran into are coming at you at full pelt. ICoW is ok if you want to drop CoA (only one curse per target) and it will mean your tank can take more of a beating.

Once you get your succubus you are in the realms of drain-tanking. Basically you are the one taking the damage so throw an Immolate at the target, then your instant DoTs and finally Drain Life till they die. It helps to run away from them while you cast those instant spells. The succubus can be either whipping them for extra damage or seducing their friend. This is a fun and fast way to play but not ideal for every situation, don’t forget your voidwalker if this is proving tricky.

Spells

    * Level 12 – Health Funnel – keep your pet alive while your DoTs kill the mob.
    * Level 14 – Drain Life – Great for resource (health/mana) regeneration and drain tanking.
    * Level 16 – Unending Breath – Used to be useful before everyone got lungs like pearl divers. The speed boost is quite nice if you have the glyph.
    * Level 18 – Create Soulstone – Fantastic spell that I typically forget to keep active on myself.
    * Level 18 – Searing Pain – Not particularly great spell for most situations.
    * Level 20 – Demon Armor – Replacement for Demon Skin, don’t forget to update your action bars.
    * Level 20 – Rain of Fire – AoE fireballs from the sky. Nice.
    * Level 20 – Ritual of Summoning – Is that a summoning stone in your pocket?
    * Level 20 – Summon Succubus – Read all about it!
    * Level 20 – Felsteed – Wheee! Giddy Up!

    * Level 22 – Eye of Kilrogg – I once killed Illidan with only Eye of Kilrogg and Ritual of Souls; true story.
    * Level 24 – Drain Mana – I have used this is AQ once and to solo the Tiger boss in ZG, that’s it.
    * Level 24 – Sense Demons – If the smell isn’t enough…
    * Level 24 – Curse of Tongues – Great spell for reducing the damage output of casters, in the same way CoW is for meat-heads.
    * Level 26 – Detect Invisibility – By the time you realize you need this buff it’s probably too late. Remember, it does not detect stealth.
    * Level 28 – Create Firestone – Very nice boost to damage, keep it active all the time.
    * Level 28 – Banish – Crowd control for demons.
    * Level 30 – Enslave demon – More CC for demons. Handy if somewhat troublesome.
    * Level 30 – Hellfire – More AoE, unfortunately not as good as rain of Fire. I like this spell and wish it were worth using more.
    * Level 30 – Summon Felhunter – Our own puppy and subject of the next ‘Meet the minions’.

    * Level 32 – Curse of Elements – This can be very handy if you are with other casters, though oom-chickens and unholy death knights can apply it easier.
    * Level 32 – Shadow Ward – Actually very handy if you remember to use it when about to take shadow damage.
    * Level 36 – Create Spellstone – If you’re not leveling as destruction then swap to using this weapon buff.
    * Level 40 – Howl of Terror – AoE fear; fun and danger in one spell.
    * Level 40 – Dreadsteed – Epic mount, oooh yes! Fast and Furious

Gear

Historically any cloth gear with stamina and intellect was considered warlock loot. This is still true to some degree as we do get more out of stamina than other casters (bigger health pool means bigger mana pool). With the introduction of the Glyph of Life Tap and the changes to make Life Tap work off spirit, this is now also a stat worth having.

Spell power is highly desirable as a green stat. Look out for those randomly enchanted items: …of the Eagle, …of Spell Power and even …of Healing are all good (healing bonus was converted to spell power a while back). There are a few items that stand out during leveling but they are too many to mention here. I do remember the robe from the final boss in RFD being one I didn’t replace for quite a while. It might be worth reading the comments for further suggestions.

Powerleveling

If you have a character at level 80 and want to shower your new lock with gifts, then the heirloom items are well worth going for. Primarily I would suggest the ones that give an experience boost (Tattered Dreadmist Mantle and Tattered Dreadmist Robe). After that the Dignified Headmaster’s Charge is fabulous and very warlocky (I couldn’t bring myself to ever throw away my original Headmaster’s Charge). Finally the trinkets are fabulous, especially at low levels where you don’t see them dropping from mobs. I would suggest the Discerning Eye of the Beast before the Swift Hand of Justice.

If you really want to get through the levels as fast as possible then you could try and persuade a level 80 character to boost you through Deadmines, Wailing Caverns or Shadowfang Keep till 20 then the various wings of Scarlet Monastery until 40. This is quick leveling but you’ll learn nothing about playing a warlock that way. Warlocks are hugely fun to play at all levels with loads of options and variety, so get out there and bring terror to the populous.

Addendum

Somebody mentioned something about being able to gain experience in battlegrounds. I guess you could do that if you like that kind of thing.

Alliance and Horde In-game Leveling Guides

Zygor Guides Has The Fastest Leveling Path In The Entire World! We Get You To Level 80 In Under 7 Days Using Our 100% In-Game Leveling Guides.

Joana’s 1-80 Horde Leveling Guide. In-Game Leveling Guide Mod included! Level Fast!

Main features:

* Spell Timer
* Cooldown Timer
* Warning Sounds
* Self & Raid messages
* Talent Spy

For warlocks also:

* Soulstone Tracker
* Shard Manager
* Summon Assistant
* Shard Spy
* Healthstone Spy

The timers currently have limited support for All Classes and of course full support for Warlocks & Death Knights.

Type /fx or /fw to show the options interface.

Fortegaming.com, the addon’s original home, is no more. That’s why I’ve decided to make wowinterface and curse its new official homes. I will write a new features overview here when I get time. I’m sorry for the current lack of documentation. You should be able to get quite some information from the options interface and its tooltips in-game, but if you have any questions, just ask.

You can always see a sneak peek of the upcoming changes in the change log.