Warlock Leveling Guide 1-120 Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

Table of Contents

• 1. General Battle for Azeroth Leveling Tips
• +2. Leveling 1-120 as an Affliction Warlock
  • 2.1. Gear Options
  • 2.2. Level by Level Rotation and Talents
    • 2.2.1. Talents to Level Up as an Affliction Warlock
    • 2.2.2. Rotation to Level Up as an Affliction Warlock
    • 2.2.3. Summary of Unlocked Abilities for Affliction Warlock
  • 2.3. Affliction Warlock War Mode Talents for Leveling
    • 2.3.1. General PvP Talents
    • 2.3.2. Affliction Warlock PvP Talents for Leveling
  • 2.4. Legendary Options
  • 2.5. Pet Choice for Affliction Warlock Leveling
  • 2.6. Quest Rewards
  • 2.7. Consumables
    • 2.7.1. Gunshoes Macro
  • 2.8. Congratulations!
• 3. Changelog

1. General Battle for Azeroth Leveling Tips

Welcome! While this leveling guide is specifically made for the class and specialization(s) listed, we also have a general Battle for Azeroth leveling guide that focuses on the specific features of the Battle for Azeroth expansion including preparation of your mission table that will be used to unlock new areas, progressing on your faction's War Effort to save time at Level 120, and a reminder to keep ALL of the gear you find for the Scrap-o-Matic 1000 or Shred-Master Mk1, which will greatly increase your resource generating capabilities. Please visit our 110 to 120 leveling guide for this information and more (including Heirloom and War Mode advice that also applies to players who are not yet Level 110.

2. Leveling 1-120 as an Affliction Warlock

2.1. Gear Options

When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. If the item levels are equal, you should choose the piece with stats that are most favorable to your specialization. If your current item is an Heirloom, it should not be replaced.

2.2. Level by Level Rotation and Talents

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

2.2.1. Talents to Level Up as an Affliction Warlock

Your first talent row unlocks at Level 15.

Your talent set up should be as follows.

• Level 15: Deathbolt
• Level 30: Absolute Corruption
• Level 45: Burning Rush
• Level 60: Phantom Singularity
• Level 75: Mortal Coil
• Level 90: Haunt
• Level 100: Creeping Death

2.2.2. Rotation to Level Up as an Affliction Warlock

Starting at Level 1, you only have one main attack ability: Shadow Bolt.

1. Cast Unstable Affliction whenever you have 4-5 Soul Shards. It does high damage and you should avoid wasting Soul Shards by letting them hit maximum.
2. Phantom Singularity should be cast whenever available. The healing and multi-target damage it provides is great for leveling.
3. Apply Agony to targets to generate Soul Shards and deal damage. Agony is instant cast, so you can deal with multiple targets while on the move.
4. Cast Seed of Corruption when multiple targets are stacked together to apply Corruption.
5. Apply Corruption to targets to deal damage. Corruption is instant cast, so you can deal with multiple targets while on the move.
6. Cast Summon Darkglare when you have DoTs applied to quickly burn down tougher opponents.
7. Haunt increases the damage we deal to a target. Haunt deals good burst damage and resets with each kill, and should be used as a nuke while leveling.
8. Cast Drain Life when you need to heal.
9. Deathbolt is our Level 15 Talent, and should be cast once you have your DoTs applied for burst damage.
10. Cast Health Funnel when you need to heal your Demon.
11. Cast Unstable Affliction to spend Soul Shards.
12. Cast Shadow Bolt to deal damage.

2.2.3. Summary of Unlocked Abilities for Affliction Warlock

You unlock your first ability of interest at Level 3.

• Corruption unlocks at Level 3. Corruption can be applied to enemies and deals Shadow damage periodically for 14 seconds.
• At Level 5 you acquire your first pet, Summon Imp. This summons a demon that casts spells and persists until you dismiss it or it dies.
• Soul Shards, your main resource, unlock at Level 10. Soul Shards are generated randomly by Agony damage.
• Agony also unlocks at Level 10, and deals Shadow damage periodically for 18 seconds. The damage increases over time, until it reaches a maximum number of stacks. The stacks can be preserved by recasting Agony before the effect expires. It also has a chance to generate a Soul Shard when dealing damage.
• Drain Life is available at Level 13, and is your first channeled spell. Drain Life does low damage, but restores a modest amount of health with each tick.
• Unstable Affliction unlocks at Level 14, allowing you to spend Soul Shards. Unstable Affliction increases the damage you deal to targets by 10% and deals strong damage over a short period of time.
• Fear is unlocked at Level 16, and is a "Crowd Control" spell. Fear makes a target run in random directions for 20 seconds, but the effect can be broken by damage.
• At Level 18, you can cast Create Healthstone. Healthstones can be used to quickly restore Health to your character, which can be lifesaving.
• Summon Voidwalker is available at Level 20. The Voidwalker is a "Tank"-style pet that is good for using while leveling.
• Health Funnel, available at Level 22, is a channeled spell that siphons 25% of your maximum health over several seconds in return for your Demon to heal for twice as much during that time.
• At Level 24, you can summon an Eye of Kilrogg to temporarily control. Your character viewpoint shifts to the Eye, which moves quickly and can be used to scout.
• Unending Breath unlocks at Level 24, allowing you to breathe underwater indefinitely while you have the buff, as well as increasing swim speed by 20%.
• At Level 26, you unlock Unstable Affliction's second rank. Unstable Affliction will now refund a Soul Shard if the target dies while the effect is active.
• At Level 28, you an unlock the ability to cast Summon Succubus. The Succubus pet is generally most effective for Player vs. Player combat, as it possesses good Crowd Control abilities against Humanoids.
• Banish unlocks at Level 32, and is a powerful Crowd Control ability against certain monster types. Banish is only effective against Demons, Aberrations, and Elementals, and lasts 30 seconds.
• At Level 34 your Soul Leech passive is available. This grants a passive absorption shield to your character based on the single target damage you deal, and can accrue up to 10 of your maximum health in damage protection.
• At Level 36, you unlock Summon Felhunter. The Felhunter has the ability to interrupt enemy spellcasts, which makes it a useful pet for dungeons and Player vs. Player.
• At Level 38, you unlock an additional pet ability which can be activated by the Command Demon ability. The ability you unlock depends on your pet.
• Seed of Corruption also unlocks at Level 38, is a debuff that can be applied to a target. Doing enough damage to the debuffed target triggers the Seed to explode, dealing damage to everything and spreading Corruption to affected targets. This spell is designed to help you deal with multiple targets more efficiently.
• Ritual of Summoning can be cast at Level 42, but it requires 2 additional players to complete. This will create a Summoning Portal, which lasts 5 minutes and can be used (with the help of an ally) to summon party and raid members to your location.
• At Level 44 you can apply Soulstone to yourself or your allies. Soulstone lasts 10 minutes, and has a 10 minute cooldown, allowing the beneficiary to resurrect immediately upon death.
• At Level 52, your Agony spell is upgraded, and may now ramp up to 10 stacks.
• At Level 54, Unending Resolve unlocks. This is your primary defensive ability, reducing all damage you take by 40% for 8 seconds, as well as granting immunity to silence and interrupt effects for the duration.
• Enslave Demon can be cast at Level 56, which allows you to force a Demon NPC to become your Pet for 5 minutes.
• Summon Darkglare unlocks at Level 58, and this is your main DPS cooldown. Darkglare lasts 20 seconds, extends currently active DoT effects, and does increased damage based on your active number of DoTs.
• At Level 60, Shadowfury becomes available. This allows you to stun a group of monsters within a radius.
• At Level 66, you can cast Create Soulwell, allowing your entire party or raid to acquire Healthstones for themselves.
• At Level 70, Soulstone is upgraded so it may be used to instantly resurrect a dead target.
• Mastery: Potent Afflictions unlocks at Level 78, which quickly becomes your best stat. It directly increases the damage of your DoT abilities.
• At Level 80, Demonic Gateway finally unlocks. The Gateway connects two points, and interacting with either end causes players to be quickly transported to the other side. Players can only use a Demonic Gate once every 90 seconds, but it can be very useful for quick movement.

2.3. Affliction Warlock War Mode Talents for Leveling

In this section we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Affliction Warlock-specific PvE talents.

2.3.1. General PvP Talents

• Relentless is a passive ability but it does not automatically remove crowd control abilities, but instead reduces the duration.
• Gladiator's Medallion is an on-use ability that removes all movement impairing effects and all loss of control effects.
• Adaptation automatically removes any loss of control effects that last 5+ seconds, a maximum of once per minute.

Adaptation is recommended for most players, as it is automatic and on a relatively short cooldown. This makes it the overall best choice with PvE in mind.

2.3.2. Affliction Warlock PvP Talents for Leveling

1. Rot and Decay can be very useful in situations with high sustained damage intake. Combining this with Essence Drain greatly increases your survivability and sustainability and opens a lot of doors for soloing difficult content.
2. Essence Drain stacks a damage reduction effect on enemies that are damaged by your Drain Life. You can reduce their damage by up to 25%, which is a large increase to your ability to survive and sustain.
3. Curse of Shadows causes damage over time effects to strike an additional time for 20% of their original damage while active. This offers a little bit of extra burst damage on a short cooldown.
4. Curse of Fragility can be a helpful curse for reducing the health of elite and dangerous mobs.

Curse of Tongues, Curse of Weakness, and Nether Ward can be situationally useful, but are not recommended as general purpose choices.

Endless Affliction can be helpful for certain situations, but is generally not recommended for leveling as it reduces the burst of your Unstable Affliction.

Soulshatter can also be situationally useful, particularly if you are leveling in a group, but requires you to properly play around the cooldown.

2.4. Legendary Options

If you are just coming out of Level 110, you will probably have a number of different Legendary items to choose from. Your Legendaries' special effects will stop working at Level 116, but until then they can be a very powerful addition to help you level up quickly. These are our Legendary recommendations for leveling as an Affliction Warlock in Battle for Azeroth:

• Sephuz's Secret is by far the best choice, giving you a ton of movement speed and damage that can be regularly procced. This will noticeably speed up your leveling and should be considered a must-have if you can get it.
• Sacrolash's Dark Strike should be your second choice. The stats from the ring are nice, and the permanent slow is great utility for leveling. The Corruption damage bonus has great synergy with our leveling Talent of choice, Absolute Corruption.

2.5. Pet Choice for Affliction Warlock Leveling

Summon Imp is your first available demon, but is best suited to Raid Environments. This pet is not particularly useful for leveling, but you have no choice for the early levels.

If you are leveling alone, Summon Voidwalker can be a helpful choice while leveling up, as it takes a lot of the pressure off you. Avoiding casting pushback can also increase leveling speed.

Summon Felhunter can be a good choice if you are leveling in a group, or venturing into dungeons. The extra interrupt is helpful for dealing with troublesome caster mobs.

2.6. Quest Rewards

You should equip new quest rewards when their item level starts beating out your previous set of gear. If you are currently wearing Tier 21 gear, it is best to let the quest rewards significantly beat your existing item level before using them. With that said, you will unlock Azerite pieces early on, which are worth using over Tier gear in most circumstances.

If possible, we recommend holding on to all Quest Rewards you do not use. They can be scrapped at Level 120 for material resources for profession crafting.

2.7. Consumables

There are several consumable items that can be purchased that will help you with your leveling speed.

• Skystep Potion increases your movement speed by 150% (more than a mount!) for 8 seconds. It has a 1-minute cooldown. This is extremely useful and should be used often and aggressively for any travel that is more than ~100 yards long.
• Gunshoes are an Engineering item that increase your movement speed by 200% for 25 seconds. These will make you almost as fast as a Flying mount. We recommend having a lot of these, and using them whenever you are traveling more than ~250 yards.
• Goblin Glider Kit is very useful for covering long distances from high places.

2.7.1. Gunshoes Macro

The Gunshoes will not let you stop moving for as long as they are active. Using this macro twice will click the buff off and allow you to stop.

• #showtooltip
• /use Gunshoes
• /cancelaura Gunshoes

2.8. Congratulations!

Congratulations on reaching Level 120! Now that you have hit Level 120 we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at maximum level. To get yourself prepared for the end-game content ahead, we strongly recommend this Battle for Azeroth Raiding Lexicon/Spreadsheet by Medivh. It is a gold trove of information that will help you when gearing up in Battle for Azeroth and more.

3. Changelog

• 10 Dec. 2018: This page has been reviewed for Patch 8.1 and no changes are necessary.
• 12 Aug. 2018: Revamped leveling page for BfA.

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