Warlock Guide: Basics - Playing a Warlock - Quests - Pet Guide - Skills, Spells, Abilities and Talents - Trainers - Weapons&Armor - Warlock Forums & Community

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Warlock spells have several uses. From level 1, you will have a Nuke, a DoT (Damage Over Time), and some summoning / utility spells. Your "Nukes" will be the Direct-Damage attacks, and one of your primary sources of damage throughout your adventures. These spells include Shadow Bolt, Soul Fire, Incinerate and Chaos Bolt (should you spec for it)

Your "DoT"s are what make your class unique in World of Warcraft. First you start off with Curse of Agony, then you will be getting DoTs and Debuffs such as Curse of Weakness, Corruption, Siphon Life, Unstable Affliction, and so on. These inflict damage on your enemies as time passes, so you can use these in combination with your best Nukes for a devastating combination against your enemies! Don't worry about running out of Mana, this is where your utility spells come in.

Utility spells such as Lifetap are very, very useful to the Warlock. It's like Milk and Cookies, you can't have one without the other! With Lifetap, you will be recovering the Mana you expend nuking and cursing your enemies, and hopefully your spells will be letting you recover your lost health (or maybe a healer), this way, your casting is nearly unlimited and will never truly run out of mana like those silly mages. As long as you have a healing source, and you will, especially if you spec into Affliction, you can keep on casting.

Wrath of the Lich King Spells

We have written a detailed description of the new Wrath Of the Lich King Spells, you may view our writeup by clicking here!

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Talents are what differentiates you from other Warlocks - your special abilities. You may choose to go nuke-heavy and spec into destruction, yet risk making your DoTs less useful overall, you may also choose Demonology, and strengthen your Demon buddies and gain unique abilities with them, or you may just decide to go Affliction, and Curse your enemy with so many DoTs it will make their head spin.

You may view our updated Warlock Talent Guide, detailing every single talent and what they do, by clicking here!

Keep in mind that Talents are in no way permanent, and will always be open for new specs if you can pay your trainer's fee. It starts out at 1 gold, then it goes to 5, then multiples of 5. If you have the gold, and you should if you can complete a handful of Quests, then you have unlimited tries to find the build YOU like for yourself!

Make sure to discuss the Talent Builds you see here or add your own by visiting our Forums!

A complete talent calculator can be found on the official World of Warcraft Site. Here you can try out your different builds and find the best one for your needs, then take it to practice in-game and see if it's truly as great as you think it is! Keep in mind that this calculator assumes you have level 80 and gives you the points a level 80 has, so if you're starting out, remember that your first Talent Point is given at level 10, and you will gain an extra one per level you obtain.

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On to the good stuff. These are the newest collected builds from the Top-Tier Guilds, tried-and-tested for optimal damage both during PvP and PvE, with a slight focus on a raiding kind of Warlock, yet still very sturdy for some PvP combat.

As always, feel free to share your best Talents with the Community should you find new ones worth mentioning, and we will add them here and credit you!

Affliction (Raiding) Build

You will notice that Haunt builds are all the rage as of right now - this is because the extra DoT damage increase, along with high sustainability and life regeneration is top-tier at the moment. We will look at a couple Affliction Builds and note their differences - these are taken from highly successful Warlocks in the Top Guilds.

Haunt / Ruin - Strictly for PvE Endgame raiding, this build gets Haunt for the damage boost, but ignores some PvP talents such as Instant Howl of Terror, favoring Improved Shadow Bolt, Bane and Ruin in the Destruction Tree. This is viable because you will want to add your Shadow Vulnerability debuff to your enemy as soon as you can, then unload all your DoTs, Haunt included, in order to maximize your Shadow Damage. Keep in mind that by having Ruin, your Shadow Bolt crits will also be doing a LOT more damage and will have you contending for Top DPS if you can upkeep your DoTs and nuke effectively!

Do note that any PvP-based Talents, including Dark Pact, Improved Fear and Fel Concentration are sacrificed in order to obtain Ruin. This means you will definitely need to Life Tap at times. This build can be further modified if you can spare a couple Talents from some of the other Affliction Talents and go 2/2 Destructive Reach so you can keep your distance from the Bosses.

Affliction (PvP)

Haunt / Soul Link Yes, you thought it would never happen, but many Warlocks in PvP guilds are favoring Affliction as well for now. Why is that, you may ask? Well, simple... Soul Link was moved way up in the Demonology Tree, so you may now pick it up along with Haunt for extra healing goodness while having some serious HP in PvP!

Naturally, this is the other end of the Spectrum. You pick up Improved Fear and Improved Howl of Terror, and grab the Demonology Talents to further increase you and your Demon's HP! This Talent Build is one of many variations depending on which spells you like best, but do not skip Soul Link, it is still your Life Saver in a tough PvP battle against a Warrior, or anyone really!

Have comments or suggestions? Thought of something that has been missed? Found an error? I would love to hear from you! Please post in our Warlock Class guide forum, or email us at [email protected]