Spooncraft

Warlocks are masters of shadow, flame, and demonic power. They are a robed class that excels at plaguing their enemies with damage over time spells and curses, hurling bolts of fire or shadow energy across the battlefield, and summoning demons to aid them in combat. While warlocks are powerful casters that deal damage from a distance, their demonic powers can also protect or support their allies in battle, or even summon other players from across the world using ritual magic to conjure portals.

Warlocks are a relatively easy class to pickup but a fairly difficult class to master. They have mana as their primary resource for casting but unlike other mana users they can sacrifice their own health to replenish their mana. They have limited self-healing spells as well such as the channeled Drain Life or conjoured health stones. Warlocks can also specialize into Siphon Life which is a damage over time spell that also heals the warlock.

Warlocks are a straight DPS, damage dealing class. Here is a breakdown of their three talent trees and their primary roles.

Affliction: This tree is all about damage over time spells. There are many self healing buffs and spells within this tree and some would venture it has an advantage in PVP combat do to the mobile nature of the spec. Almost all of an affliction warlock’s dots are instant cast and can do some very serious damage. Spells like Haunt will heal the warlock for a lot and at the same time augment and increase the amount of damage done by his other DOTS for the duration. Unstable Affliction is purely a PVP attack since if cured from the target, deals considerable damage to the healer as well as silencing them.

Demonology: This is the prefered leveling spec for many warlocks and plays to the strengths of the warlock’s pet, the demon. Through this spec warlocks can radically increase their own damage dealt simply by buffing the demon as it’s stats are converted into raw added power to the warlock’s individual spells. Damage taken by the warlock is also reduced by Soul Link, and through Master Demonologist the warlock is always in a state of perminant buffed. The Felguard is a unique demon pet that only the demonology warlock can summon and he’s a pretty powerful tank and damage dealer in his own respect. The 51pt talent is also extremely unique in that the warlock can turn himself into a demon. This demon form increases all armor by 600%, reduces the chance to be hit by a critical strike, and increases all base damage done by 20%. While in demon form, the warlock can still cast each of his spells and gains access to a few new abilities such as a very powerful area of affect fire damage aura, charge, and melee shadow cleave type move.

Destruction: A destruction warlock is the master of hellfire. They pretty much annihilate their targets with advanced fire spells, damage over time fire attacks, and their new 51pt talent spell deals chaos damage (fire and shadow) that cannot be stopped by the enemy’s defensive barriers. A destruction warlock usually boasts the best crits with the most damage output but are vulnerable to high levels of threat in a group that could typically mean their demise, and unless played skillfully will run out of mana regularly. It’s also more challenging to try and PVP as a destruction warlock but overall seems to be a lot of fun and breaks the normality of most warlock specs.

Wowhead has a really great talent calculator where you can experiment with new builds for your Warlock.