Warlock Guide, FAQ, Read This First!Follow

Let me start by saying I’m an Undead Warlock primarily Affliction based that will add in information to the guide/faq from others to try and keep the common questions answered here. This post is not entirely mine others have offered good tidbits of advice and I have added it in here.

The question of race is a good question to start with.


The first major hurdle is which side do you want to be on Horde or Alliance. If you have friends already playing you'll want to pick the same "side" as them. Otherwise it boils down to on average Alliance outnumber Horde by 4-1. On some servers its a greaer disparity. You can make your own inferences based on the 4-1. More alliance means more contested hunting grounds but also means more people to group with and venture into instances and such. Also it means more people to raid into enemy territory.

Ok after settling on which side you want to be on you'll want to look at the racial abilities.

Gnomes get:
• Escape Artist - Activate to break out of a Root or Snare effect - Instant - 1 min cooldown
• Expansive Mind - passive Increase Intelligence by 5%
• Arcane Resistance - passive All Gnomes get +10 Arcane Resistance
• Technologist - passive 15 skill bonus to Engineering.

If you want to be an engineering warlock then a gnome might be a good choice. The escape artist is marginally useful from breaking out of snares and such, but you can buy items that do the same thing. Arcane resistance is decent for in PvP.

Humans get
• Perception - Activate to increase stealth detection radius by 10 yards - lasts 20 sec – 3 min cooldown
• The Human Spirit - passive Increase Spirit by 10%
• Diplomacy - passive 10% bonus to faction point gain
• Sword Specialization - passive Humans get +5 to Sword skill
• Mace Specialization - passive Humans get +5 to Mace skill.

Detect stealth is marginally useful as you have to activate it. This means you have to know something is stealthed before hand. Also warlocks can train to use swords but most use staves for the stat bonuses. The sword skill bonus is nice but you will probably be shooting wands more than swinging your weapons. The spirit boost is ok for reducing downtime in PvE but warlocks get spells to enhance health and mana regen so we have little to no downtime as it is. Admittedly at the end game rep grind the Diplomacy can have a huge effect on reputation gain and grinding.

Orcs get:
• Blood Fury - Increases attack power by about 4 per character level (282 at 70), but reduces healing effects on you 50%. Lasts 15 sec.
• Hardiness - passive 15% resistance to stun and knockout effects.
• Command - passive Pet melee damage increased by 5%
• Axe Specialization - passive Orcs get +5 to Axe skill.

The stun resistances orcs are reporting are more like 3% at most so that is not a great bonus. Warlocks can't use axes, but the pet damage bonus can be helpful. Blood fury allegedly boosts spell damage similar to the attack power boost, I don't have and orc but this is what I have been told.

Then there are Undead which have:
• Will of the Forsaken - Activate to become immune to fear, sleep, and charm effects - lasts 5 sec - 3 min cooldown.
• Cannabalize - Activate to regenerate 7% of total health every 2 sec. by consuming Humanoid or Undead corpses within 5 yds - lasts 10 sec - 2 min cooldown
• Underwater Breathing - passive Underwater breath increased by 4x
• Shadow Resistance - passive All Undead get +10 Shadow Resistance.

Cannibalize which allows you to eat humanoid or undead corpses to regain health faster, which is decent benefit while PvE'ing and lifetaping. The second undead active ability only really shines in PvP and is Will of the Forsaken, which is 5 seconds of immunity to fear, charm, sleep and will break you out of fear upon activation but not sleep/seduce. If you plan to play on a PvP server Will of The Forsaken or WoTF can be game changing. The most common strategy warlock in PvP is to fear kite your opponent. Alliance warlocks often complain about undead and their WoTF as an "I win" button in PvP especially undead rogues. I've found the undead extended breath to be useless to a warlock since we get a spell allowing us to breathe underwater very early on. The shadow resistance is good for fighting alliance warlocks and shadow priests.

Since the burning crusade came out the Blood Elves have joined the warlock fold.
• Arcane Affinity - passive Enchanting skill increased by 10.
• Arcane Torrent - active - (Hunters/Paladins/Mages/Priests/Warlocks)
Silences all enemies within 8 yards for 2 sec. In addition, you gain 5 + 1/Level Mana restored per Mana Tap charge currently affecting you - Instant - 2 min cooldown.
• Magic Resistance - passive All resistances increased by 5.
• Mana Tap - active Reduces target's mana by 51 and charges you with Arcane energy for 10 min. This effect stacks up to 3 times. Amount of mana reduced is 50 + 1/Level - 30 yd range - Instant - 30 sec cooldown.

The ability to perform an AE silence as a warlock in PVP seems wonderful in addition to the mana returned. Although I must say warlocks already have a plethora of mana returning options through talents and spells, this seems to be additional icing on the cake. The lack of caster monsters makes the arcane torrent and mana tap abilities a little less helpful in PVE as a consistent help. Overall I'd say Blood Elf racials seem a good fit with warlocks.


I’ve started my warlock and found a staff how do I use it?

Horde warlocks can train Staves in either Ogrimmar with Hanashi in the Valley of Honor or in Thunder Bluff with Ansekhwa on the lowest of the center rises.

Alliance warlocks can train Staves in Stormwind with Woo Ping in the Trade District, or in Darnassus with Ilyenia Moonfire on the Warrior Terrace.

I’ve found a cool sword I want to use where can I train it?

Horde warlocks can train Swords in the Undercity with Archibald in the War Quarter

Alliance warlocks can train Swords in Stormwind with Woo Ping in the Trade District


Ok I hit level 10 and this new talent thing came up. What should I spend my first talents on?

This is a subject of debate. My personal opinion is first 5 into Improved Corruption. You can never have too many instant cast spells. However if you have talent build plans other than affliction Demonic Embrace is a solid first 5 as well as Improved Shadow Bolt. Demonic Embrace’s power is evident at the higher levels when you get more +stamina armor and equipment.

What are the common warlock builds and why?

Warlock builds are wide and varied. Most talents are of some use to moderate use. Things that don’t work as advertised are.

Improved Drain Soul in Affliction: Not only does the target have to die while its soul is being drained but the drain soul spell has to do the killing damage to get the effect. Most warlocks re-specialize out of this talent when they take it and find this out. Some really like it and work hard to make the effect work for them as implemented … and intended by Blizzard.

Pyroclasm in Destruction: The % chance to stun the target is over the duration of the spell not per wave. Most warlocks report seeing drastically less than 26%. (this is going to be fixed in upcoming patch 1.8)

Here is an existing thread on talents to avoid.

Here is Bohdi's thread on builds

New 2.0+ Talents Build thread from WOW forums.

Wow Forum Thread on builds ... being updated

You can find a Talent Calculator to play with your talent points here.

Level 60 common builds are SM/Ruin MD/Ruin and many others.

Shadow Mastery/Ruin or SM/Ruin is taking affliction to full shadow mastery and all destruction to Ruin and getting as much + shadow damage gear as possible and spamming shadow bolts until things die. Mostly a raid specialization that has been reported to produce the most damage a warlock can.

Master Demonologist/Ruin has surfaced since the 1.6 patch as an alternative to SM/Ruin for high end raid damage through either sacrificing your pet or using the Succubus’ +10% damage master demonologist buff to boost shadow damge, like Shadow mastery and getting the benefits of the demonology tree over the affliction tree. I have not tried this and if anyone has a better write up on it I’ll add it in here.


Build discussion threads already in existence with decent information are:
Decent Build Thread 1

Decent Build Thread 2

Decent Build Thread 3


What is Drain Tanking?

See an existing thread:

What is the importance of Stamina to a Warlock or Stamina vs Int?



Int v Sta Thread

Why Stamina thread

Pet Tactics how do I use my pet?
Cobalt has a good summary of the pets in the next post.
Grimore Vendor List of Pet Abilities

Imp/Succy in PvP:
Keep the little bugger phased and on passive until you have been engaged - in the heat of the battle, once your foe has started attacking you, he'll face two threats. Especially handy against rogues, who would otherwise sap you and dispose of your little dps booster. This also works for the succubus with her invis. In PvP scenarios always keep her invis to prevent the sap and kill off of your pet. Those who use dark pact will often just leave the imp on passive to use his mana for themselves.

Note the imp only has his firebolt as an attack no melee for him. When his mana is gone he just sits there as the gImp.

PvE Voidwalker and link/add management:
If you get a link/add, make sure your initial target is dotted (CoA,Corruption,Siphon Life), then set the VW on the second target and destroy it. Fear any third link/adds if they arrive. You can keep changing targets to use the single target taunt to keep both mobs on the VW. I generally wait until one of the mobs turns to manually fire his AE taunt as the Auto Taunt setting for his AE taunt fires off at the wrong times for me. Remember Searing Pain and Sacrifice if the VW starts dropping too fast. If you're down to one enemy health funnel is often forgotten and saves both you shards and the mana of resummoning a pet.

Felhunter in PvE:
His/Its use has widely diminished since the removal of paranoia threat generation. In the past warlocks could massively spam paranoia to focus all threat on the fel hunter. This resulted in major AE fests for the warlock with no risk to the warlock other than the fel hunter being slain. Cobalt has a decent PvP summary for this pet in the next post.

Infernals and Doomguards are toys:
These pets are situationally useful at best, but then all our pets are situationally useful .
They are ours to command for a limited time before they turn and get released/slain. There are ways of resetting the enslave diminishing return timers but in general most locks don't whip out the infernal unless they have a large camp to clear or a large area of people to stun/slay. In PvP a single warlock on the other side can negate your high risk small reward pet with banish. I'm 50 and haven't bought the components or done my Infernal quest yet. But in the battlegrounds I've banish/killed a 50 lock and stolen his infernal from him. Boy was he pissed. I like my faithful 4 more than the unreliable 2. Doomguards are somewhat difficult to procure from my understanding, often the ritual slays the warlock, then creates a doomguard without someone to enslave it :)

Felguard:
I have not had the opportunity to try this bad boy out but my encounters vs soul linked felguard toting warlocks in the battlegrounds have been 50/50 encounters. He is a 41 point talent in demonology and is similar to the imp/succy/blueberry/felhunter in that he is not an enslaved minion but a summoned minion. He has a warrior like intercept ability and stun seems to hit moderately hard. Consider him a melee damage dealing nightmare that is moderately resistant to spells ... he shakes off my aoe fears like mad.



Usefull Warlock UI Mods
Defintely Useful
Shard Tracker
Necrosis
Marginally Useful
Servitude Pet Manger

How do I perform the Ritual of Summoning



Warlock threads on the battlegrounds
Affliction Warlocks Role in Warsong Gulch

<more information to be added as necessary.>

Sticky Edited, Thu Aug 18 19:11:59 2005 by Darkflame

Edited, Jul 3rd 2007 8:26am by Kiggulak

Edited, Jul 3rd 2007 8:28am by Kiggulak

Edited, Aug 3rd 2007 12:49pm by Kiggulak

Edited, Aug 3rd 2007 12:52pm by Kiggulak

Edited, Mar 25th 2008 6:31am by Kiggulak

Edited, Jul 13th 2008 9:26am by Kiggulak

If you feel something needs adding here please feel free to PM me with the new content.

Edited, Thu Aug 18 20:35:08 2005 by Kiggulak

If you are in a group/raid situation where there are competant tanks, and competant healers, use of Curse of Shadows and non stop shadow bolts with all + shadow dmg gear and a SM/Ruin talent build then yes you can out damage a mage.

That said having the above situation is not an everyday occurence for me. I out damage mages by killing them in PvP 9 times out of 10. Its not that I do more damage than them I remove their hit points faster than they remove mine, I just have a ton of hit points and ways to replenish them.

Even people that can out damage mages have a second set of armor/weapons that offer Stamina/Int bonuses instead of the +shadow bonuses for the solo'ing and not being in that ideal my damage is better than your damage comparison scenario.

Well, imo all races are about equal when it comes to being a lock, they all have at least 1 racial bonus that helps greatly.

Undead-cannibalize
Orc- +pet dmg
Gnome- +int
Human- +spirit(not as good as the others, but still somewhat useful)

The highest SB crit ive ever seen was in a video a friend showed me, the lock did 8000+ dmg with a SB. Keep in mind that this lock was lvl 60 with full +shadow dmg/spell dmg gear and chose to raise Int instead of Sta(so he had crappy HP), the mob also had CoS on and if I remember correctly the lock had the effects of the +shadow dmg potion on

Could some post the Quests to get Pets please?

At least in undead :)

Canabalize helps all warlocks regardless of server, PvP and PvE.

Will of the forsaken only boosts undead in PvP, and only vs priests and warlocks who can get the Anti-fear trinkets from attaining second tier rank in the PvP honor system. This used to be an IWIN button when it was 30 seconds of immunity after the break. Now it is 5 seconds after the break. While useful hardly and IWIN button against a skilled player.

Edited, Tue Nov 22 09:16:14 2005 by Kiggulak

Shadowburn Rank 1 is a talent tree point. Throw 10 points into destruction tree to unlock it, and the 11th point it is usable.

Most helpful guide ever

i started a lock and im lvl 10 im a human lock, but i dunno what race to choose shud i switch to horde or..........i dunno i just want to know whta lock to be pvp or pve??? i need alot of helpp plz elp me:)

hey im a lvl 42 undead lock and i just wanna say i wish id read this guide earlyer. when i was playing those lower lvls i had no clue what i was doing with my talent points and stuff and have alredy respeced once just o figure out ive prolly gotta do it all over again. so gj with this guide

Same.

Pet abandoning apparently has been corrected by blizz. I've removed it from the guide.