Blood Pact: Locked and loaded

Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.
Sweet 70! Time to rest on your shadowy laurels, or press on into "endgame"? Stripping it down, WoW endgame is raiding and PvP. You may have reputations to grind, heroic instances to run and daily quests to complete, but raiding is truly the only way to experience content you haven't seen before, at least from the perspective of a Warlock. Similarly, PvP - with unpredictable opponents, ever-changing scenarios and the thrill of competition - is another way to keep things fresh and challenging.

Most players engage in a little bit of everything, and the choice really lies with you. Since The Burning Crusade, PvP has become a good alternative means of progression, with rewards that rival those from PvE. Many raiders also dip into PvP as a reliable source of gear upgrades to improve their raid performance.

Regardless of what you choose to focus on, the game at 70 definitely involves more group work. If you have soloed all the way to 70, your lone wolf days are over, if you wish to progress further. Let's look at some of endgame expectations for warlocks.

Getting into a guild
Endgame is all about group work. A guild should ideally offer you like-minded individuals to play with, and thus progress with. Keep these in mind while looking for a guild:

• Is the guild's objective in line with yours? Are the guild member focusing on PvP or raids? Can you work your goals around them?
• What stage of progression is the guild at? If the guild is already working on The Eye, your fresh 70 toon would definitely be out of place. While a few established level 70s might help you out, can you really count on having nine such players consistently helping you with Karazhan?
• When does the guild play? Obviously you want a guild that is largely online when you play. At the same time, you also want to be able to consistently show up for raids. Many raids fall apart simply because of no-shows.
• Can you fit into the guild's culture? Are guildmates friends or more like colleagues?

As with any real life group situation, it's not only about the guild serving your needs. What do you have to offer the guild in return: contributing mats? Voluntarily helping other guildies? Or just simply showing up on time for scheduled events consistently?

Gear

Love it or hate it, gear is a large component of your PvP and PvE performance. Getting a good set of pre-Karazhan gear from PvE or crafting should be your immediate priority.Battlegrounds and Arenas are also good ways to get great gear for both PvP and raiding.

A PvE warlock's most important stats are: spell damage, spell hit, spell crit and spell haste. Spell hit is generally an easier way to increase DPS than spell crit, up till its cap of 202 for raid bosses (more doesn't help). Warlocks who have 5/5 Suppression need a spell hit rating of just 76 to maximize the chance of their DoTs landing on raid bosses, although they'll probably want more as Suppression does not affect shadow bolts and other destruction spells. Spell haste benefits Destruction warlocks the most, by shortening the cast time of their nukes. A spell haste of 15.7 improves your casting time by 1%, but obviously does nothing for instant spells.

As a pre-Karazhan Warlock, you should aim for a spell damage of about 700 (with Fel Armor), a crit chance in the early teens, and a 30-ish spell hit rating.

PvP warlocks focus on a different set of stats: stamina, resilience, and spell damage/crit. Since you're fighting targets of equal level (other players), you need a spell hit rating of just 38 to achieve the 3% needed to max out your hit chance at 99%. For affliction locks, just 2 points in Suppression (2% spell hit per talent point) will max out the hit chance for affliction spells.

Naturally, your choice of gems and enchantments should be focused on these respective stats. Some obvious gem choices are Veiled Noble Topaz and Runed Living Ruby. ConsiderSteady Talasite and Solid Star of Elune for your PvP gear. You may also want uncommonequivalents of these gems. Chaotic Skyfire Diamond is a good metagem choice for destruction and demonology locks, while Swift Starfire Diamond is great for afflliction locks.

Raid DPS

Your main job in a raid is to kill stuff. To have an idea of how you are performing, get a damage meter like SWStats. A DPSer playing without a damage meter is like a driver racing without a speedometer. A damage meter isn't meant to stroke your DPS epeen - it's a tool to show you where you are, with respect to other DPSers. It also highlights problems: if your total damage and DPS is significantly lower than other similarly geared DPSers, it means you're not fully exploiting what your class can do. 

Generally warlocks should be among the top five in the DPS charts. If you're not, look at other warlocks: how are they specced? How are they geared? What enchantments and gems do they have? Talk to them about their spell cycles.

A DPS discussion is never complete without talking about its evil twin - threat. The Warlock has one of the highest threat-to-damage ratios. In other words, for an equal amount of damage, the Warlock can generate more threat than other DPSers. An overzealous Warlock can pull aggro from the tank, leading to his or her demise at best, or at its worst, wiping the raid. Get a threat meter like Omen, and learn to use Soulshatter pro-actively to correct your threat level before bad things happen. Using soulshatter intelligently can also maximize your damage output.

Raid utility

As a Warlock, you offer more than DPS to the raid. Expect to do crowd control, whether it's seduce, banish, enslave, fear-kiting or even pet off-tanking. Be aware of your CC limitations and durations; you're generally expected to still deliver damage, even while you're CCing.

Some raid encounters will demand very specific abilities from warlocks - don't be caught not having a critical spell on your interface. Learn the encounters and have the appropriate pet summoned all the time - don't let the raid play the game for you.

Offer healthstones without being asked, particularly before a boss encounter. Soulstone a rezzer intelligently, keeping in mind that soulstones aren't only for wipe recovery, but for battle rezzing as well. In certain situations, the raid will benefit more with a soulstone on a Druid, on a squishier DPSer like a Mage, or even yourself!

Work out curse assignments among warlocks, especially debuffs like Curse of Elements, Shadow, Exhaustion, Weakness and Recklessness. A separate Warlock channel is great for this purpose. Remember that what benefits the raid benefits you as well - don't get DPS tunnel vision.

Blood Pact: The final stretch

Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.Ding, 58! You're officially eligible for Outland content now. Go ahead, step through the Dark Portal. The quality of Outland gear simply outclasses the stuff you will get in the old world, for the same time investment. Yes, Outland mobs will hit harder and fights will last longer, but the increased difficulty shouldn't faze a Warlock, and will certainly be pie if you brought a friend (preferably a healer) along. Be cautious with the pulls, remember your lessons, and you should do just fine in the Outland at level 58.

Completists among us would sneer at this suggestion to skip content. If you're in no hurry to hit 70, then more questing power to you!

The last stage of leveling from 61 to 70 in a nutshell: no new pets, no new mechanics. If you are level 60, you have pretty much learnt all the tricks of the Warlock trade. A 70 lock is essentially a 60 with (much) bigger numbers and some nifty tools to make this stage of the game less laborious.

Fel Armor

For 61 levels you've been buffing yourself with Demon Armor/Skin - a nice but rather 'blah' self-buff. At level 62, the game gives you +50 spell damage with Fel Armor. Yes, spell damage - one of the most important stats for a DPS caster class. Rank 2 of Fel Armor, learnt at level 69, gives you a sweet 100 points of spell damage!

Fel Armor blows Demon Armor out of the water, period. Drop the latter off your bars to free up a button slot. Never ever forget reapplying Fel Armor to yourself every half hour! Demonic Aegis in the demonology tree makes Fel Armor even more outrageous (thanks, Diabla).

Incinerate

One final nuke for warlocks at level 64. This spell is a mana-efficient, faster-casting replacement for shadow bolt while soloing or short fights. It's got a nice, 'crawling' fire animation too!

Interestingly according to these calculations, as a chaser for immolate, this nuke tops shadow bolt in DPS if you don't have any points in the destruction tree. With Bane andImproved Shadow Bolt factored in, shadow bolts still reign for sustained combat.

Unless you spec heavily into the destruction tree (Emberstorm and Shadow & Flame) and have good fire-biased gear, the general consensus is that shadow bolt will remain your staple nuke.

Soulshatter

Soulshatter, learnt at level 66, gives you an aggro dump every five minutes. At the cost of one soul shard, you reduce your all-around threat by 50%. Obviously you're not going to use this ability much while you're soloing, but Soulshatter is essential when it comes to group work and raids. Be careful using this AoE effect around mobs that haven't been aggro'ed, Soulshatter will actually turn them onto you! (Tested this again, soulshatter doesn't aggro mobs - thanks, Atilim.)

Ritual of Souls

It used to be a pain handing out healthstones via the trade window, especially when you're the only Warlock in a big raid. At level 68, you can create an automatic healthstone dispenser at the cost of just one soul shard, with the help of two other teammates. Each soulwell is good for 10 healthstones. Tell your helpers to not fidget during the ritual, or it'll fail and you can only do this again after five minutes. This spell is such a good idea that I'm surprised that mages only got their own food/drink dispenser last patch.

Seed of Corruption

If you like to make things go boom, this is the spell for you at level 70. Seed of Corruption (SoC) is a combo DoT/AoE effect that replaces Corruption. In other words, SoC overwrites corruption and you can't have both on a single target. When the seeded target takes 1044 damage from any source, the seed explodes, causing glorious AoE damage within 15 yards (cue maniacal laughter).

Non-lethal AoE damage from other SoC explosions, however, will not trigger a detonation. In other words, the explosion from target A has to kill target B, before it triggers the detonation in target B. This prevents you from setting off a 'chain' of explosions on a bunch of healthy targets.

Note that a seed's explosion only affects enemies around the seeded target. If target A's seed explodes, only target B and C gets the AoE damage, not target A. Target A will only suffer the DoT component of SoC, if any before detonation. So you'll want to seed as many different targets as possible to maximize the effect of this spell. The AoE damage also passes through walls and floors (This has been fixed last patch). As with any other AoE effect, be wary of attracting lots of unwanted attention from mobs!

Talents

At this point, you should have developed a good picture of what each talent tree offers to make an informed decision. There is no single 'best leveling spec' at this stage, although I am inclined to say that the Affliction gives you the most bang point for point, with little to no 'filler' talents.

I'd even venture to say that Blizzard did a good job with our trees, differentiating them through playstyle, rather than viability. All three trees give you good DPS, and only really differ in forms of delivery. Warlocks truly have a choice, and your choice simply depends on your preferred playing style, if you're not a min-maxer.

A recap of pros and cons of each tree:

If you're curious, this was my build at level 70, which was good for solo farming (there was a lot of farming to do as a fresh 70) and delivering some respectable burst damage on trash mobs in instances. Some warlocks swear by a Felguard demonology build such as this for leveling post-60, due to the pet's excellent DPS. For all intents and purposes, there is no one perfect build for all situations. Picking one talent over another is a value choice, and that entirely depends on your experience and preference. Check out Chris' excellent discussion of a 43/0/18 build.

There you go, a full-fledged cultist of the dark arts! For some, 70 represents the end of a long road (at least until Wrath of the Lich King). For many, this is just the beginning of the 'endgame', whether it's raiding, PvP or both.


Discover what awaits you in the endgame ->

Blood Pact: Let's lock and roll to 60!

Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.Freshly mounted, you are perched at the beginning of the end of your Azerothian adventures: levels 41-60. The fantastic Outland beckons, but it is not time yet. While your demonic collection of minions is almost complete, and your spellbook is swathed in shadowy flames, your training is far from complete.

More power, more dungeons and more slaughtering of hapless fauna wandering stupidly in the wilderness awaits. With a resolute glint in your eyes, you give a silent command to your flaming steed and gallop into further depths of shadow and flame.

TalentsThe path of warlocks truly diverge at this stage, depending on how you invest your talent points. All three of our talent trees - Affliction, Demonology and Destruction - are very viable in both PvE and PvP; your choice is really about the play style you prefer.

Destruction gives you the power to blast away your targets with ease, but you will need to cultivate a drinking habit, much like other mana-using classes. Demonology adds to the power your minions already have, and gives you the Felguard at level 50. If you have been following the path of Affliction, you should be well aware of your relentless staying power by now.

For maximizing leveling efficiency and solo survivability, I will recommend continuing down the Affliction tree, followed by 5 points in Demonic Embrace for a build like this at level 60. This build gives you all the goodies in Affliction, and dips into Demonology for more Stamina (Spirit is a non-issue with Drain Life, Life Tap and Dark Pact).

If you want to have the Felguard as soon as possible, get this build. This build maximizes your DPS as a demonology lock and assumes that you'll be tanking with the Voidwalker initially, and the Felguard later. Feel free to drop the three points in Improved Voidwalker into other pets, if you use those pets more. Don't let these builds limit your options - try all the trees to find one you like, if respeccing cost isn't an issue. Go nuts!

A notable talent in the demonology build: Soul Link. Many PvP warlocks spec this, especially those who participate in the Arenas. When active, your pet effectively soaks 20% of all damage for you, dramatically increasing your survivability.

Pets

Your quartet of pets - Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus and Felhunter - will pretty much meet all your minion needs. Investing 41 points in the Demonology tree, however, will give you your personal DPS warrior who comes with his own Arcanite Reaper lookalike - the Felguard. You have two more pets waiting in the shadowy wings, but the Felguard probably represents the last useful pet you will get in your warlock career.

By level 60, your felguard can taunt, charge and do a sweeping attack like real warriors. This pet is certainly a signature pet for warlocks leveling in the Outland, but its utility quickly fades in level 70 raiding and PvP.

The other two remaining pets are the Infernal at level 50, and the Doomguard at level 60. These pets add to your range of neat party tricks - they behave like normal enslaved demons. Yes, you need to enslave them every five minutes at the cost of one soulshard, with diminishing returns. Some warlocks use these pets to wreck havoc in outdoor PvP, especially in early zones where the infernal can be an awe-inspiring sight to new players.

Despite the lack of utility of these two 'endgame' pets, the quest chains to get these pets are pretty fun, and I fully recommend everyone to do them. Remember to bring some non-warlock friends on the last stage of the infernal quests!

Dreadsteed

Another rite of passage for the warlock at level 60, for the unbelievably cool Dreadsteed. TheDreadsteed quests will require a trip each to the Scholomance alchemy lab and Dire Maul West. The mount is NOT free, although recent patches have reduced the material requirements substantially.

This is the perfect time to get to know the rest of the more established Warlock population. Besides their wonderful personalities, chances are some of them will still have the three reusable items required for the final stage. You'll save 250g if you get a Warlock with those items to help you. The other mats should cost you 200-300g, depending on your server's AH prices.

Debuff, DoTs and nukes

Death Coil - a most controversial nuke, learnt at level 42, also known as 'skillcoil' or 'lolcoil' (mainly by people who had been pwned by warlocks). It's a 3-in-1 instant: damage, heal and horror. The healing component may be trivial, but a well-placed Death Coil can reliably get a Warlock out of trouble, or get his PvP opponent into serious trouble. Use this with abandon when soloing like a normal nuke, you shouldn't be needing the horror portion of this spell much. In PvE group work, you'll want to watch this as your tank might not appreciate you peeling the mob off him or her. In the worst case scenario, the horrored mob might bring more nasty friends.

Curse of Shadow - this is the level 44 cousin of CoE, a curse that boosts shadow AND arcane damage. Like CoE, this debuff can contribute more damage on the whole than your damage dealing curses, depending on group makeup. In a raid with multiple warlocks, mages and shadow priests, your raid leader may assign CoE and CoS duties to specific warlocks to increase the raid's DPS.

Soul Fire - a long-cast (yawn) nuke learnt at level 48, probably only used by Destruction warlocks. With a 4-second cast (after improvement by Bane), its utility is obviously limited if your target is already beating on you. Some warlocks use it as their opener, or on a PvP target that's been CCed.

Unstable Affliction - this 41-point talent that will bring an affliction lock's DoT count on a target to five. This DoT makes dispelling warlock DoTs a nightmare in PvP, dealing a chunk of crit-able damage to the dispeller and silencing them at the same time. UA locks are very common in the Arenas.

Shadowfury - deep down the Destruction tree is this tier 9 talent, available at level 50. Shadowfury is nice, fast-cast AoE weapon for the destruction lock. Comes with a War Stomp effect stunning all targets in an area for two seconds. Obviously useful for PvP, and adds to a destro lock's PvE damage output if used carefully.

Curse of Doom (CoD) - think of this as a 1-minute time bomb. Like CoA and CoEx, this spell can be given a nice boost by Amplify Curse. Avoid 'forgetting' to amp up by using this macro:

#showtooltip Curse of Doom
/cast Amplify Curse
/cast Curse of Doom

The first line of the macro will force the button to show the tooltip and cooldown for CoD, instead of Amplify Curse. Use this judiciously in multi-target fights to increase your overall damage output, as this spell does not break crowd control abilities. By the time the group gets to burning the CC'ed mob, CoD should pop to deal a nice chunk of damage.

This curse is preferred to CoA in long boss fights, even though back-to-back CoAs will deal more absolute damage. The multiple global cooldowns triggered by CoA, however, can make room for additional shadowbolts if you used CoD instead. You'll also have one less DoT to constantly re-apply during the fight. Note that when CoD pops, your threat can spike dramatically - so get a timer and don't piss your tank off.

If your target is killed by CoD, there is a small chance you'll get a Doomguard spawn. This is one way of getting your doomguard 'pet' without questing for Ritual of Doom. Use CoD on level 1 critters to get your bat-winged badass!

Quest

What better weapon to complete a Warlock's outfit than a reaper's scythe, aptly named Soul Harvester. At level 50, pick up An Imp's Request from your trainer and you'll embark on a quest line that will send you to Felwood and the Sunken Temple (bring friends!). Do this series concurrently with your Infernal quests. Upon completion, you will have a choice of a staff, robes or trinket. The trinket is one of its kind in the game, while the other two are probably easily replaced by better gear later.

I picked the Soul Harvester for sheer coolness!

The Outlands and your last 10 levels await! ->

Blood Pact: Free mount at 40!

Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.I confess that I rolled a lock for simply the coolest mount in game, back in May '05 when I was still a wide-eyed WoW newbie. Yes, the one thing that visually - and financially - sets us apart from most other poor sods who have to cough up 90g or so: the free Felsteed mount at level 40!

When you ding 40, put EVERYTHING on hold, fly/run/swim to the nearest Warlock trainer and get Summon Felsteed for 1g (or probably just 90s, depending on your reputation with the city). For this low, low price, you also get 75 riding skill, so that you can ride all other basic mounts - but why would you wanna?!

Now that I've stuck this carrot-on-a-stick in your face, let's hope that this will spur you through the enchantingmid-levels of 21 to 40.

Financial freedom
So what do you do with all the gold you've saved on your mount? Invest in bags, of course. Soul shards can take a lot of space, so you'll want as much bag space as possible for uninterrupted questing and farming. As a very general rule of thumb, you should have 10 shards for soloing and 20 shards for group work. Some warlocks carry up to 40 shards for raids! Remember, a lock should never be caught without shards.

Pets

In 1-20, the game threw three vastly different pets at you. The bad news for 21-40: you will only get one new pet, the Felhunter at level 30. The good news: Enslave Demon, also available at level 30, will open the door to a whole range of demonic playthings!

The felhunter is a anti-caster pet that many warlocks like to PvP with. The dog-like demon makes counterspell and 'decurse' effects available to the Warlock in a durable, magic-resistant package. By level 36, your doggie should have its full arsenal of abilities, minusParanoia.

You'll probably want to manually control the felhunter's Spell Lock, to prevent it from being stuck in its 3-minute cooldown at the most inopportune PvP moments. Like the succubus' seduction, this pet ability can be better managed with a hot-keyed macro:

#showtooltip
/clearfocus [modifier:alt]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/cast [pet:Felhunter,target=focus,harm] Spell Lock; Spell Lock

This macro uses the /focus function to 'lock' onto a target, without the need to manually reacquire. Use the Alt key to change your focus.

The Hunter may have the animal kingdom to befriend, but in line with the badass theme of warlocks, we have demons to enslave. At the cost of one soul shard, you can have a cool demon (with chains!) at your disposal for five minutes. Impress your friends, tank the mobs with one of their own, but watch that duration 'cos you'll have an angry demon after you when enslave breaks (a timer is useful here).

DoTs and nukes

You won't get many new DPS toys from 21 to 40, other than upgrades to your existing ones. In other words, by level 20, you pretty much have all the staple DoTs and nukes.

At level 30, you get to puff Hellfire around you. This is a channeled AoE spell that does more damage than Rain of Fire. Unfortunately the spell is centered around you and you get to share the fiery pain with your enemies (another sure sign of Warlock emo). Make sure your healer is well-trained to recognize what you're trying to do, and pop some shields or heals your way. Also make sure that the mobs you're going down in a blaze of glory with is occupied with a tank or an AoE-ing mage. Even without mobs beating on you, this spell, unlike Life Tap, will gleefully send you on a corpse run.

Incidentally, sometimes you may actually want a corpse run. An example is heading to the back door of Karazhan when the raid is done with the opera event. It's simply quicker to take a shortcut via the graveyard, since Death by hellfire does not incur repair costs. It's a fun way to trip your healers' panic buttons too.

Some talent-specific spells should be mentioned here:

Siphon Life - you get this at level 30, but only if you've made a beeline for it in the Affliction tree. This DoT acts like a fire-and-forget Drain Life, but it's not mana-efficient for the damage it does. Use this for its heal-over-time component. Good for longer or multi-target fights.

Shadowburn - instant nuke at the cost of a soul shard; refunds the shard if the mob croaks within five seconds. This is the first instant-speed nuke a Warlock will get, but you'll need to spec 11 points into the Destruction tree to get this bad boy.

Debuffs and crowd control

You get two curses at level 26 and 32: Curse of Tongues (CoT) and Curse of Elements (CoE) respectively. CoT makes life difficult for casters and is arguably more valuable in PvP. Imagine stretching the cast time of a greater heal to 4.5 seconds or any other cast times by 50% - simply evil! An interesting side effect of this curse is when the player of the affected toon types something in chat, it comes out as gibberish (or Demonic, for the lore-inclined)!

Rank 1 CoE increases fire and frost damage by at least 6%. "Waitaminute, but locks don't do ice spells!" you may point out. This is where the group utility of CoE comes in: this curse increases the effectiveness of other classes in your party of raid that do use ice - like the Mage and Shaman. Mages benefit the most from CoE, with both schools of their elemental magic boosted. CoE has limited utility when you're soloing, unless you're destro-specced and sling a lot of fire spells (which begs the question: shouldn't a pyromaniac like you roll a mage?)

If you haven't noticed, warlocks are manipulative, in lore, theme and abilities. Another example of resource manipulation is Drain Life's little sister: Drain Mana, learnt at level 24. Unlike its big brother, this spell is very much left unused, especially while soloing. It shines in specific boss encounters, like Moam in AQ20.

Banish, first learnt at level 28, makes the Warlock indispensable in demon or elemental-laden encounters. Simply put, Banish is the best form of crowd control: it doesn't heal, it doesn't move the mob randomly, and it's unbreakable - at least until it wears off, or if you decide to cast it on a different demon or elemental. (There was a short period of time when a lock could break banish with a second banish on the same mob, but alas, that was quickly 'fixed'.) A Warlock can effectively pwn a group of four demons alone: enslave one to tank a second, banish the third and DPS the fourth. Don't forget to laugh like a maniac at the same time.

Consider a /focus macro and a timer for this excellent spell:

/clearfocus [modifier:alt]
/focus [target=focus,dead]; [target=focus,noexists]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/cast [target=focus,harm] Banish; Banish

Use the Alt key to change focus, as usual. Be careful when using this in conjunction with other /focus macros, as you might end up trying to banish a seduced target, for example. Seduction takes precedence for me, since it's the easiest to break.

At level 40, you learn an AoE fear spell: Howl of Terror. With a cast time of 1.5 seconds, it is limited in its utility. Invest two points in Improved Howl of Terror to make the spell instant, and you'll be howling away in both PvP and PvE. In PvP, use this to get out of sticky situations or be a general nuisance. In PvE, you can use this as a limited form of crowd control, or buy time for your DoTs in multi-mob farming. Sold yet? Unfortunately, the earliest level you can make this spell instant is 46. Patience, young lock.

With the howl, the Warlock's crowd control arsenal is pretty much complete: seduction, banish, enslave, fear, and pet tanking. We are one of the privileged classes that can control multiple mobs at the same time. Learn to use your CC tools well, and you'll be well-loved in 5-mans and raids.

Stones

While healthstones and soulstones are staple Warlock tools, the utility of the other two stones - Firestone (level 28) and Spellstone (level 36) - is suspect in PvE. If you do not have a good wand, go ahead and equip either of these, particularly the spellstone. In PvP, many warlocks equip the spellstone for its crit and 'get out of jail free' blanket magic removal. With a cooldown of three minutes, I'd say that the spellstone is more useful in Arenas compared to a lackluster wand.

Talents

Making our way down the Affliction tree, we will start to get some real gems:

Fel Concentration - a must-have if you want to drain-tank your way up. With Soul Siphon, Drain Life becomes a virtually uninterruptible monster.

Nightfall - another reason to drain life. Makes your shadowbolt instant when it procs every other fight or so, if you apply corruption and drain life diligently. This talent doesn't proc nearly as much in group work, since it's more effective to spam nukes than drain and hope for a proc.

Dark Pact - an absolute gem for minimizing downtime, obtained at level 40. You'll almost never need to drink again! This talent makes your pet a mana battery. The imp is ideal for this, with its phenomenal mana regen. With dark pact, you can replenish your own mana fromboth your pet's mana and life tap. Be careful when you tap mana from the succubus though, you don't want her to be out of mana when you need a seduce.

At this point, you'll have to pick different builds, depending on your play style and the server type you're on

If you dabble in PvP or play on a PvP server, get Curse of Exhaustion (CoEx) and its requisite talent, Amplify Curse with this build. CoEx, like fear, can get you out of sticky situations and is obviously frustrating for melee opponents that need to close the gap to do damage. Amplify curse makes CoEx 20% more debilitating, and provides a nice 50% damage boost to CoA and eventually, Curse of Doom (CoD). Make sure that your CoEx'es are amplified as often as possible, with this macro:

#showtooltip
/cast Amplify Curse
/cast Curse of Exhaustion

You can also tailor this macro for CoA and even CoD to prevent forgetting to amp them up, given that the cooldown of amp curse is a long-ish three minutes.

If you want to focus on leveling, or do not care for PvP at this point, you should consider four points in Suppression with this build. Suppression is an easy way to gain +hit, so that your targets will get less resists (or partial resists for DoTs) against all your affliction spells, which includes fear and the much maligned Death Coil.

Both these builds are designed to hit Dark Pact as soon as possible at level 40, for minimizing downtime. Feel free to tailor them to your play style - you control your warlock's dark destiny! :) Read this excellent guide with a detailed look at all Warlock talents on the official forums.

Addendum: Quests

As some of you have pointed out, there are some Warlock-specific quests from 21-40, other than the ones for your Felhunter. Some of the rewards are great, and even if they're not, the quests are part of the unique Warlock experience. We have the most class, race and even faction-specific quests, compared to the rest.

The Orb of Soran'ruk - this quest will send you to two instances: Blackfathom Deeps and Shadowfang Keep. Pick this quest up from Doan Karhan in The Barrens at level 20. Warning: there's much travelling involved as BFD and SFK are practically on opposite ends of Azeroth.

You have served us well - this is the Warlock-specific end to a Alliance-only quest chain, starting with A Noble Brew. Yes, Alliance only. It will send you to Darkshire and the Wetlands and you can pick it up at level 25, for a nice hat reward at the end.

Enchanted Gold Bloodrobe - a long chain that starts from your trainer at level 31, that gives you a very nice robe (which Mr Sexy is wearing above). In a nutshell, you will need a somewhat rare tailoring pattern (and a tailor, if you're not one), a gold bar from the AH or a blacksmith, and some drops from Desolace and Arathi Highlands. Worth doing, for the experience and the reward.

Final reminder: mount up as soon as you hit 40!

Your guide to level 60 is just a click away ->

Blood Pact: So you've picked a Lock ...

Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.

There's been a chorus from my dark brethren calling for the return of Blood Pact. As a career Warlock player - with a /played of 105 hours days (oops!) since May '05, you can say that I've been afflicted by the demonic embrace of this fascinating class. Observant readers will notice that I'm also the Blood Sport columnist - bloody coincidence? There may be more sinister forces at work here ...

With quicker 20-60 leveling in patch 2.3, this is the best opportunity for you to start on brand new alts, and what better class to invest in than the solo powerhouse class of magic-users gone all dark and emo (no other class takes large chunks out of their own health bar all the time ...).

This 1-20 leveling guide assumes you're not new to WoW. I will focus on abilities that become available as you level, and how to maximize their effectiveness, rather than a zone-by-zone laundry list of quests.

Five races delve into the demonic arts: Orc, Undead, Blood Elf, Human, and Gnoooo ... (for the love of WoW, please don't roll a gnome lock!). I'd say that the Undead, with the racial trait of Cannibalize, enjoys the most synergy with Warlock abilities. Orc warlocks have played a large part in Azerothian lore, with Gul'dan being the most notable Orc Warlock. Hey, this badass certainly knew what he was doing when he ditched shamanism for a Warlock career. Blood elves and humans look pimp in tier 5 lock gear.

To sum up the Warlock in a sentence: ranged DPS class with high survivability and deep pet, control and utility options. To sum up the class in one word? Overpowered.

Haha, just kidding.

Pets

From levels 1-20, you will gain access via small quest chains to three pets: Imp, Voidwalker and Succubus. Like Hunter pets, you'll need to train them. Always check with the demon trainer for new grimoires when you train your lock. Unlike Hunter pets, Warlock pets do not need to be kept happy or leveled independently. Unfortunately you can't name them; all your pets will come with their own demonic names.

The Imp is your personal DPSer available at level 1, and provides an important group buff,Blood Pact (yes, the namesake of this column). At level 10, the Voidwalker becomes your personal tank with access to some basic taunt abilities and sturdy enough to off-tank some lower instances. Also known affectionately as the "Blueberry", it gets an "ohnoes" button at level 16, which Sacrifices the poor pet for a temporary bubble.

The sultry Succubus, sashaying in at level 20, may be the real reason why Gul'dan ditched his totems. She packs good melee dps in her whip and gives you the power of crowd control over puny humanoids: Seduction. While many pet abilities can be set to autocast, Seduction is one spell you'll want FULL control over. With the help of a /focus macro, you can keep someone seduced in a battle without re-targeting:

/clearfocus [modifier:alt]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/petfollow
/cast [pet:succubus,target=focus,exists,harm] Seduction; Seduction

This macro will cast seduction, and break seduction to recast it when used again. Use the Alt key to change your focus. For best results, keep your pet in passive mode and get a timer like ClassTimer to monitor seduce duration. A well-controlled succubus can be as effective as a mage in humanoid crowd control, so fledging locks, go out there and give our arcane friends a run for their money!

DoTs and nukes

As a DPS class, you get a variety of ways to essentially do the same thing: kill. As a general rule, the spells you choose to use will depend on the length of the fight. Load up on instant DoTs and nukes when fights are brief. For longer fights, apply an entire set of DoTs, spam nukes and reapply DoTs as soon as they run out.

Shadowbolt - basic nuke, learn to spam this as efficiently as possible from range.

Immolate - combo nuke/DoT, good as an opener for short fights. Learn this at level 1 immediately after meeting your trainer.

Corruption - with no talents, this 2-second cast DoT is inefficient for fights shorter than 12 seconds. Deals constant shadow damage over time.

Curse of Agony (CoA) - instant DoT with incremental shadow damage over 24 seconds. Good in group situations, dealing damage while not creating too much threat upfront. Also good for pulling mobs at range when soloing; your VW should not have trouble pulling early CoA aggro away from you.

Drain Soul - channeled spell primarily meant for harvesting soul shards. This spell hardly does any damage. For all intents and purposes, you can use rank 1 of this spell for the entire game.

Drain Life - channeled self-healing dps spell learnt at level 14. This is one of the spells critical to the lock's soloability, and the key spell for 'drain-tanking': apply a full set of DoTs on target and drain away! You will be whittling the target's health away, while keeping yourself alive at the same time. At higher levels, this spell scales very nicely with talents and gear, and is one of the triggers for Nightfall.

Searing Pain - high-threat nuke. It's quicker to cast than shadowbolt, but does less absolute damage. Generally used in low level groups to pull aggro off healers or other squishies.

Rain of Fire - channeled AoE spell at level 20. Haha, rain fiery death upon your enemies! Well, use this with care as mobs will be quite angry with you if you don't kill them with this. This spell is probably meant to support mages in their AoE glory, and add life to parties.

Debuffs and fear

Besides CoA, you will get two other curses: Curse of Weakness (CoW) at level 12 and Curse of Recklessness (CoR) at level 14. CoW is probably more useful in long, multi-mob fights to reduce the load on healers. Its effect is not significant in short battles.

The control element of CoR is often more useful than its armor reduction effect. Because of this, most warlocks often only use rank 1 of this spell. CoR can be used to prevent mobs from running away near death.

When CoR is used in tandem with another curse, a Feared mob can be made to run around within a controlled area. CoR overrides Fear, so the mob will try to re-acquire its target. If the mob gets too close, apply a different curse, say CoW, and the mob will start running around randomly again, if Fear is still in effect. This technique works best with melee mobs.

Stones and summons
You get to create your first lime-colored healthstone at level 10. Always offer healthstones to party members; the stones can be consumed in quick succession with healing potions due to different cooldowns. With healing potions unavailable in the Arenas, the healthstone is an important source of instant healing!

At level 18, you get the soulstone. You can apply it to yourself to save yourself a corpse run in the unlikely event that you die while soloing. In a group, the soulstone is most useful for recovering from wipes when applied to a rezzing class like Priest, Paladin and Shaman. The beauty of the soulstone is that it can also function as a battle rez.

Ritual of Summoning, learnt at level 20, gives you the power to manipulate space and time! Well, maybe not. Summoning is a group time saver, allowing you and two others to summon other party members to your location, at the cost of a soul shard per toon. Much of the pre-run summoning has been thankfully taken over by the summoning stones outside instances, but there are still many situations where a party or raid will be thankful that they brought a Warlock along. Don't disappoint them, always bring soul shards!

Attributes and talents

For leveling, you want to focus on these attributes, in decreasing order of importance: Stamina, Spell Damage, Intellect. Stamina will add to your drain-tanking effectiveness and sustain your mana through Life Tap.

It is widely agreed that Affliction is the best tree for a leveling Warlock. Starting from level 10, your talents should look something like this by level 20. This build is meant to minimize downtime, making you more effective at restoring both health and mana, without relying on food or drinks. Less downtime means faster leveling!

For fast kills, your cast order at level 20 should be: pet attack (usually Succubus), Immolate, Corruption, Shadowbolt till dead. 

If you want to go at a slower but more constant and efficient pace with your blueberry tank: CoA, pet attack, Corruption, Immolate, Shadowbolt or Drain Life or Wand. Finish off with Drain Soul to yield a soul shard and some mana. 

The idea here is to let your voidwalker take all the damage from the mob(s), so watch out for aggro, especially with Immolate and Shadowbolt. You can also pull with your pet, instead of CoA, for better pet tanking (thanks myalternateaccount for highlighting this).

After combat, Life Tap as you run to position yourself for the next pull. You'll want to wrap up each fight with little to no net loss in your health and mana. If you focus on draining, you can potentially end combat with more health and mana than what you started out with!

Professions

Tailoring and Enchanting are ideal for a Warlock at endgame. Leveling tailoring will be slow in these low levels as you will use most of your cloth for First Aid; bandages are an excellent way of replenishing your health after Life Tap.

If you have a high-level main supporting this toon with mats and gold, go ahead and work Tailoring and Enchanting up. If you do not have that option, consider the gathering professions: Mining, Herbalism and Skinning.

That wraps up my guide for freshly minted warlocks. Do you have more leveling tips to share?

Knock out your next 20 levels and get a free mount! ->