WoW Classic Warlock Leveling Guide 1-60

Warlocks are exceptionally quick solo levels that excel even more when placed in a group. They get early access to an Imp which gives them the best kill speed in the game from 1-10, before getting a Voidwalker at 10 that can tank enemies for you all the way to 60. With the combination of Life Tap and Drain Life Warlocks can trade health for Mana, letting them always make the most out of their resources. Warlocks are also one of the two classes that get a free mount at level 40, ensuring the earliest access to a vitally important tool while leveling. With their powerful DoTs, access to wands, and a pet to tank, Warlocks are top tier levelers that should have little trouble getting to 60.

Warlock has many viable leveling specs and builds, but the most common is a combination of Affliction and Demonology, which revolves around using your DoTs and wand to kill enemies while your Voidwalker tanks enemies for you.

Demonology will offer a more defensive option while leveling, where you will utilize your demon for more damage while taking advantage of great defensive talents such as Soul Link.

We also have a Destruction build that is all about one thing: Dungeons. If you are planning to level using a spell cleave group that AoE's its way through dungeons, this is the build that you will want to run. It can also be used for solo leveling, but we do not recommend that.

To guide you in your weapon upgrades and the class-specific quests you can do while leveling up, we have two guides that you might find useful.

Contrary to popular belief, leveling with a partner or as part of a group is not a terrible thing. In fact, for most classes, leveling with a partner is actually better than leveling solo. While Warlocks are strong solo levelers, they are possibly the strongest duo class in the game. A strong duo such as Warlock/Paladin, Warlock/Druid, or Warlock/Shaman can compete with Warlocks for leveling speed, and will be faster than either player leveling solo. Warlocks can really pair with anyone, but do their best when paired with a strong support ally that can provide healing and buffs to help limit their downtime. When supported, Warlocks can play much more aggressively, using DoTs on multiple allies and casting Life Tap as needed to get Mana back instead of potentially stopping to recover. Warlocks also can be strong in dungeon groups as well due to their high sustained damage and ability to recover Mana without downtime.

Warlocks have lots of different abilities to learn, some more useful than others. Gold will be scarce early on, and while having some is important for water and repairs, Warlocks luckily do not need to worry about saving up for a mount at level 40. This gives you lots more leeway with what skills to pick up, but do not go too overboard since it is still worth having some gold at level 60 for professions, gear, and consumables.

• Demon Skin
• Immolate
• Corruption
• Shadow Bolt
• Curse of Agony
• Life Tap
• Fear
• Create Healthstone
• Drain Soul
• Health Funnel
• Unending Breath
• Demon Armor
• Ritual of Summoning
• Create Soulstone
• Drain Life
• Howl of Terror
• Death Coil
• Siphon Life if talented
• Inferno

The list above represents the most important skills that you should train while leveling as a Warlock. Following this you will skip many spells, and can choose to take them if you wish, assuming you have the gold. This list includes your important DoTs, control spells like Fear, important utility spells, and important single rank spells like Unending Breath and Inferno.

Immolate, Corruption, and Curse of Agony will make up the majority of your damage while leveling with wand attacks supplementing your DoT damage. This is the best rotation as it maximizes your damage efficiency, allowing you to passively regenerate Mana while attacking enemies with your wand. You can always throw in a Life Tap or Drain Life for extra Mana or health regeneration if you need it.

Create Healthstone, Create Soulstone, and Ritual of Summoning are you most important utility abilities that are unique to Warlocks. You will want to be able to make Healthstone and Soulstone for yourself while leveling, but Ritual of Summoning is just useful to have in case you ever decide to group for anything and need to get someone there quickly. Meeting stones at dungeons cannot be used for summoning in WoW Classic, so Warlocks are the only way to summon people to you. This can be nice as well since sometimes groups will pay you gold to join their group and help them summon a group member if they do not have a Warlock.

Fear, Howl of Terror, and Death Coil are you primary control spells. Fear is especially useful while leveling since it can be used to send enemies running while you DoT them up, letting you set up damage on second and even third targets while waiting for the first one to die. These are also especially useful if you engage in any PvP while leveling.

Your pets have spells with ranks just like you, but they cannot be trained at the normal Warlock trainers. Next to every Warlock trainer is a Demon trainer that sells Grimoires. This is how you will train your pets since each Grimoire will teach your pet a rank of one of its spells. While leveling you should buy all available Grimoires for your Imp and Voidwalker when you can train them.

Leveling as a Warlock comes down to efficiency, both with your damage and with your resources. Warlocks have the unique advantage that their resources are essentially interchangeable through spells; you can use Drain Life to convert Mana to health and Life Tap to convert health to Mana. Your main goal as a Warlock should be to minimize downtime by letting your Voidwalker tank while you use your most efficient damage rotation, which is to put up Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life, and Immolate if you have the Mana, followed by just wanding the target to death. Your wand will be a high DPS option that does not use Mana, meaning you can passively regenerate Mana while wanding after not casting for 5 seconds. This sets you up for the next kills be only spending Mana on DoTs and passively regenerating the mana back before your next target. This is an extremely safe play style that is also consistent, and is why Warlocks are considered top tier levelers.

One of the largest issues that this setup faces is that your Voidwalker does not generate as much threat as you. You will rip off of it without the proper care to let it get aggro, which can get slow. This is mitigated by sending your pet to attack first, following up with DoTs which do not deal their full damage at once, then wanding to kill the enemy. One way you can solve this is by a practice known as juggling. There are two main types of juggling: fear juggling and Voidwalker juggling. Normally, enemies do not have any diminishing returns, so you can cast Fear as much as you want, and it will last the full duration each time. This is useful since you can DoT and enemy while it is feared, and then simply Fear it again once the fear breaks from the damage and it runs back. You can effectively "juggle" two enemies at once by alternating which one is feared and keeping DoTs on them both to kill them efficiently. You can improve this even further with Voidwalker juggling by letting your Voidwalker tank an enemy by himself while only putting DoTs up on it. With just your DoTs up your Voidwalker is more than fine to hold aggro, so you can let it slowly and efficiently kill one enemy while you deal with others yourself through fear juggling.

If your goal is to hit Level 60 as fast as possible, it is not recommended to pick up professions while leveling. However, some professions are very useful for either leveling or at Level 60, and can be worth the time investment while leveling. First Aid is a must have profession at max level due to Warlock's lack of self healing, and learning it early on can be useful while leveling. Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning all are great choices for making gold towards your first mount, and can also be useful for helping to level other important professions later on, such as taking Mining to help level Engineering.

If you want an easy early money making profession, you can pick up Skinning or Enchanting. Skinning is great since you can just skin enemies as you level with little loss in time, and you will reach 60 with tons of valuable leather that you will collect along the way. Enchanting is also great since you can disenchant early green items to level up and get the materials to make Lesser Magic Wand and eventually Greater Magic Wand. They both are highly sought after early on, and can make you some easy money in the first few days when people really want them and they are not yet commonly made.

Well done on hitting maximum level in WoW Classic! Now that leveling is over, you can learn more about level 60 gameplay by reading our DPS Warlock Guide, which covers every facet of gameplay at 60 in detail.

The best individual pages to read through are as follows.

• The DPS Warlock Talent builds guide has the best builds for Level 60 covered. We propose builds for all specializations, with a focus on SM/Ruin or DS/Ruin for PvE.
• Our PvP Warlock guide is where you can find PvP builds for all 3 specializations, as well as various tricks and tips for PvP combat.
• Goldmaking Guide for Warlocks is a page with details on where / how to farm gold quickly as a Warlock when you are Level 60.
• The DPS Warlock Rotation guide is where you can read on how to optimize your PvE damage and how to prioritize your abilities.
• DPS Warlock Stats guide contains detailed information on all Warlock stats, including a list of their priority for damage dealing.
• Our Gear guide for DPS Warlocks lists all the optimal pieces of gear that you will want to farm at Level 60, in order to optimize your damage.