Beginner warlock help

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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hi all, i’m new to warlock, also relatively new to classic, played casual on retail legion bfa before this.

I have some questions regards to playing a warlock in pve, and would greatly appreciate any help/suggestions/advises given, thanks!!!:-

  1. i read on guides and youtube that at lower level, my pve rotation is pretty fixed, - send pet to mob->DOTs->wand. i felt shadow bolt was under use, or is it meant to be this way until much higher level before I should start using shadow bolt?
  2. at level 20+, should i be using void for pve/quest or should i use succ? if it depends on situation, then what are those situation where succ is more preferred than void?
  3. i have taken up tailoring and first aid, will there be a clash since both uses same mats i.e linen cloth/wool/silk etc…are these the 2 best prof for warlock?
  4. im using heavy wool bandage now but i have many stacks of linens left, should i start using heavy linen bandage to maximize my resources, or keep linens for other usages i.e tailoring?
  5. whats the easiest bag that i can craft from tailoring? im now using 10 slot bags…
  6. i know this is a subjective question, but i wanted to know the common suggestions…how many soul shards should I keep in bags? as they don’t stack i’m not keeping only 5 shards with me at all times, is that sufficient? or is there any other ways to deal with shards since they take up 1 slot each.
  7. any other tips or advises that’ll help me on my classic/warlock journey? (things that newbies wouldn’t know at the beginning, only to learn at a much later stage)

tyvm!!

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here are my answers to this (My opinion only)

1.) Lvl how you want. The reason it is recommended to do it the Pet>DOT>Wand /skip shadowbolt is mainly mana. If you have a higher lvl mage friend to supply you with water and don’t mind sitting after every 1-2 kills then add shadowbolt in. Otherwise it is better to wand so you regen your mana while your DOTs tick. I myself lvld this way as i had a 60 mage on a second account to supply me with water/food and didn’t mind the out of combat wait.

2.) Once i got the Succy i used her all the way to 60. The Void was too easy to pull off of using shadowbolts like i did. May be able to have the void tank it doing the DOT>Wand way.

3.) Again here. Do what you prefer. Myself i lvld as a Miner/Engineer. Once i hit 300 Engie and had all the stuff i wanted made that i needed to farm ores for i dropped mining and grabbed tailor. As far as First Aid goes just use what you need to skill up to the highest lvl cloth you are getting currently from kills. then if you are doing tailoring use all the extra to skill that up. If you have cloth that is not needed for skill ups see what it sells for on the AH and make some coinage that way. Don’t craft just to craft.

4.) Use the highest healing bandage that will fill you the quickest. If Heavy linen will fill 3/4 of your health bar use that…if it does not then go with the highest.

5.) Depends on what lvl mobs you can kill. What lvl cloth you can get. What lvl tailor are you. There is always a bigger bag that you can craft (that cost more in mats) until you get to 18 slotters for normal gear. Best advice is to see if you have any high lvl friends that can gift you some runecloth bags and just use those. If you do not have friends that can do that then just do the highest bag you can make and replace when you can.

6.)All up to you. While lvling i kept 5-10 shards in my bags at all times. Also kept a Healthstone and a Soulstone ready at all times. Once you get to 60 and start raiding (if you plan to) try top save up and get a 24 or 28 slot bag and keep it full. I keep a 24 slotter in the bank full of shards so if i log in late and need some for raid i can grab from bank.

7.)Do not bu skill from your trainer unless it is something that you are using. Always keep your DOTs at the highest lvl you can learn. Keep your shadowbolt at the highest if you can. Don’t worry so much about all the other curses until you get higher and have the extra coinage for it (Elements,Tounges,Recklessness.) Don’t train every skill just becaaause you can learn it…some of them are more situational and not used except for that 1 mob in 20 that its good for. Do not worry about getting all your demons skills unless it is one you are actively using. And the one thing that every guide that i have read gets wrong that new locks need to know…Yes you can put a Curse on more then 1 mob at a time. If you pull 2 mobs you can have 2 Curse of Agony’s going at the same time…1 per mob. Can only have 1 personal curse on a mob but can be done on more then 1 mob at a time.

Sorry for the wall of text…but these are my answers…others may have more to add or may have stuff they would do different then i did.

2 Likes
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Thanks for sharing, it helps a lot!

So pet-DOT-wand all the way to 60 is normal even without shadow bolt? I have a low level mage around 20, can I make food and transfer it to my warlock? And is it worth doing so?

Nice, even if u don’t shadow bolt, can I use such all the way to 60? Or void is still recommended for pet-DOT-wand?

Also, are there any other pet worth using at higher level, besides void and succ?

Thanks but I’m a Lone Ranger in classic :joy:, which I’ll learn the hard way from scratch

Yeap, I had my shadow bolt at highest rank, but always felt it’s a waste of not using it at all (I read a guide mentioned shadow bolt is our main and only dps skill aside from DOTs, hence I was curious of not using it at all)

Yeap I know about this from one of the guide, thanks though for reminding :smiley:

Totally appreciate all that you have shared, it helps a bunch. Hoping to get more suggestions and advises, needed all of em :laughing:

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There is a point that you want to start using shadowbolts in your rotation. Best suggestion i have is to time it. Kill 10-20 mobs using just pet>DOTs>wand…and then another 10-20 doing Pet>DOTs>Shadowbolt. See which is faster at your level (include total time you spent 1st kill to last kill and drinking) You get to a point where you will be using a shadowbolt or 2 just to speed it up. Again it is a trade off doing it either way. Just try to befriend a higher lvl (higher then you ) mage that is willing to give you water/food (or ask a guild mate.)

The main reason locks will use the void (as far as what i have read/been told) is for “Drain Tanking” I honestly never could get that method to work for me so i just used the Succy the entire time once i got her. She is the highest DPSing demon you will get and is able to “stun” a mob if you need a slight breather to bandage, so long as the mob has no dots on them.

I leveled while grabbing talents more in line with the raid DS/Ruin Spec rather then in the affliction tree and my time to 60 was just over 8 days played. Someone that drain tanks may have a quicker /played time but for me since this was my second 60 was not in as big a hurry to get to max.

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Look up " dive’s drain tanking guide" for how to level a lock.

Succubus is better than Voidwalker at literally everything while leveling. She does triple his damage, is even better at holding threat for the brief amount of time you actually want her tanking (you want to pull off her after a global or two so she she only gets hit like once or twice and “the air” tanks as the mob runs from her to you), she is also easier to keep healed up, and never runs out of mana, even after you get dark pact.

You don’t need many shards, and I recommend merely putting a shard bag you do get from questing in the bank for later. At 60 I carried 2 shard bags at all times before aq40 gimped my inventory via needing so many more consumables and different sets of gear, so now I only run 1 shard bag

As far as other tips… Remember that curse of recklessness can be used on a feared mob to make them immune to fear’s effect, but DOES NOT actually break fear… So you can “juggle” mobs before they pull adds by hitting them with reck, letting them run back to you, then hitting another curse so they go back to running away.

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You’re a lock. You have options. That’s what it means to be a lock. Level how you want.

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Thanks.
This is exactly what I felt, I’m only lvl20 and even at my current level, the void didn’t hold agro for long before mobs actually come for me (hence he didn’t really ‘tank’ full) which makes me wonder, since my pet can’t tank long for me, would it be better to go with a higher dps pet (succ), and as you said, with higher dps pet it could prolly hold longer agro :sweat_smile:

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I used the void walker until the mid 30s on my warlock because I felt like the succubus died too quickly and my dots weren’t pulling aggro off her fast enough. Then I picked up some ‘of shadow wrath’ gear and I was able to pull aggro off her easier so she died less often.

The void walker is fine, and can provide a really nice shield via sacrifice. He can hold aggro on multiple mobs, and is a very good pet to use. However if you’re looking to level fast and efficient nothing beats the succubus. Just turn all her abilities off so she only auto attacks and get Dark Pact ASAP. She’s an infinite mana battery for you and even just her auto attack does way more than the voidwalker.

My rotation while leveling was always Immolate > Curse of Agony > Siphon Life > Corruption > Wand

After a mob dies spam Dark Pact to regen mana and get your pet going to its next target. Depending on mob density, your gear and ability, you can easily juggle 1 to 3 mobs at a time using this method. Also remember curse of agony and siphon life are your longest ticking DoTs so apply them early.

After around level 45 you’ll find that Drain Life is doing more dps than your wand, and I started using it much more than wanding.

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Thanks, every point you shared indeed helped a lot, really appreciate it :smiley:

Disable all her abilities so she won’t pull much agro and suicide?

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Yes. It also makes it so she’s always at full mana and when you’re L40 and acquire Dark Pact you can siphon her mana to replenish yours.

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  1. Yes you level affliction. 21 points until you get siphon life. Your rotation should be immolate, agony, corruption, siphon life. Drain life while pet tanks.
  2. Tailoring and enchanting are best professions. you can make many great warlock gear using tailoring. what you don’t want to Disenchant to make shards. You should go to silithus and buy all the wizard oil recipes, enchanting is the best profession now.
  3. voidwalker is good tank.
  4. raise your tailoring to cap if you can with left overs. there are great recipes.
  5. you get better bag as you raise tailoring, all the way to 18.
  6. you get soul bag eventually, which has many spaces for shards. but keep as many as you need. affliction doesn’t need many, you can be fine with 5 or so. nothing to use them on. it’s destruction that uses many shards because of shadow burn and soul fire spells using shards.
  7. talk to other warlocks on server, they will tell you. but find one who leveled by playing the game, not one who bought their levels by buying dungeon runs… those guy know nothing about leveling warlock.
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I’ve found that even with extra talent points in the Voidwalker’s threat abilities to boost it, overloading DoT’s & such tends to pull aggro if you don’t wait for at least 2 taunts to land first, so I generally use a Curse of Weakness (or the one to slow casters) on mob instead of Curse of Agony & then that problem goes away. Just keep Immolate & Corruption up (& Siphon Life if needed for regen+damage) & wand wand wand. The major bummer for me is no +spell hit talents for Destruction spells (Shadow Bolt, Immolate, etc.), so resists are more common on those, & loading up on +spell hit at endgame for raiding becomes a major undertaking (since Shadowbolt is your primary DPS in raids). You will be stuck wearing the generic/lowbie looking Bloodvine set for quite some time.

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thanks!!

ok so eventually wand is out of picture? since drain seem to overtake wand’s damage (it also heal)

i’ll check it out pretty soon

so shards could be stored in a specific bag later on? no longer uses normal bag slots? (how many of those bags can we have? :smiley:)

hmmm so now drain, instead use wand? so wand or drain actually better? :stuck_out_tongue:

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I drain life if I need to restore health, otherwise I wand.

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Yep. That’s pretty much it.

You can try engaging multiple targets at once, but other than that, things are simple.

Shadow bolt is horribly mana inefficient. I recommend against using it for leveling most of the time.

You can use either. The voidwalker can just about hold a target with dots on it, so you could attack a second target while the first one burns.

The succubus becomes a better option once you have access to Dark Pact (lvl40). At that point, turn her abilities off, and use her as a mana battery (and an extra “DOT”).

You can still use the voidwalker after level 40. However, to make the voidwalker worth it, you really need to be attacking multiple targets at once.

Tailoring is a primary profession. You can have two primary professions.

First aid, cooking, and fishing are secondary professions. You can have ALL of these in addition to two primary professions.

Pick up another primary profession like mining or herbalism. This will help with gold.

I wouldn’t worry too much about conserving linen bandages you’ve already made. Just try not to make more bandages than are required to level you to the next part of first aid.

Each type of cloth has an associated bag: https://classic.wowhead.com/guides/classic-wow-bags-storage

That depends on what you’re doing, how much you die, which pet you’re using, whether you use soulstones and healthstones regularly, etc.

I like to roam around with 56 shards in my bags.

At a certain point drain life becomes better damage than wanding. When that happens, you should put max points in fel concentration and improved drain life. Now you can “drain tank” a mob with dots on it. If you do this right, your health doesn’t go down even though they’re hitting you.

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There are bags that can only hold soul shards. Those bags tend to be MUCH bigger than normal bags. For example, I have 2 Core Felcloth Bags, which each hold up to 28 soul shards.

Likewise, there are big bags that only hold items from a single profession. Check the bag guide I linked in my last comment.

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At lower levels, you don’t need as many. I think my level 13 warlock has a whopping 3 - healthstone, pet summon, and spare. But in a few more levels I might be doing dungeons and need soulstone on healer, healthstone to everyone, pet summon, maybe 2 player summons.

My 53 warlock has a full shard bag in the bank, a full shard bag on their person, and 3 in the normal bags to summon pet, healthstone, soulstone when I log in to play. A guildie’s 60 warlock runs around with three full bags and burns through them in PvP. A raiding 60 has to plan for player summons, healthstones, soulstones, and more, possibly well over 100 soul shards.

There are shard bags. The first, I think, is a quest reward around level 20. The biggest is hard to get the pattern for, hard to get the mats for (Felcloth) and expensive. Those take away bag space, but when you’re a lowbie with 6-slot bags, a 14-slot soul bag is nice. (I tend to just keep that bag full when I get it.)

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thanks!! very helpful indeed, how about tailoring and enchanting as main prof as suggested?

tyvm!!! something new to me… and yes very good info…

it makes all the sense now why my shards are separated from others, thanks!!

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These two are normally paired together because neither of them requires a gathering profession.

With blacksmithing or engineering, you need metal from mining. With alchemy, you need herbs from herbalism. With leatherworking you need leather from skinning. You could buy the herbs and leather and metal (or have another character to collect them), but people like to pair a gathering profession with a crafting profession.

For your first character, the biggest concern is leveling up and making a bit of gold. With that in mind, it’s actually not a bad idea to have two gathering professions until you reach level 60.

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oh 1 more question regards to shard bags, whats the real use of having a shard bag when i can still store shards in normal bags, which i think normal bags are better since they store shards and also other stufs, while shard bags can only store shards. and it also uses the same bag slot…