My planned Warlock leveling talent and rune build for Classic SoD

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

Runes:

Hand slot: Metamorphosis.

Leg slot: Everlasting Affliction

Chest slot: Master Channeler.

At level 25 i’ll have the following Talents: Maxed out Demonic Embrace, Maxed out Imp corruption, Maxed out imp life tap, and Suppression up to four.

Next, I’ll get Suppression maxed out, then max out Imp Drain Life, then max out Grim Reach, then grab Amp Curse, then grab Siphon Life, then Curse of Exhaustion, then max out Imp Curse of Exhaustion.

With these talents and runes at level 40, I’ll have a balanced character ready for both pve and pvp.

What are your plans for Phase 2?

Edit: the goal with this build is to go for Curse of Exhaustion, which is useful both in pve to keep humanoids from running away while tanking, and in pvp to keep your targets from running away as well.

this is why I avoid imp Curse of Agony, since I won’t be using it, and with rune of Master Channeler, Fel Concentration isn’t nessicary.

Edit2: at level 40 one could trade Demonic Embrace for Shadow Mastery for imp self healing, I suppose.

3 Likes
2

Destro all the way
Backdraft and conflags yes please. I only care about PVP tho.

3

I want to try something like this but adding the Nightfall talent if they fix the bug not proccing shadow cleave.

4

Cool blogpost Aedelaide, very glad to hear it.

Get serious!!!

5

Everlasting affliction is useless. 100% complete, utter garbage. It’s a great talent in wrath when you have a bunch of SP boost procs to snap shot a beefed up corruption. This does not exist in vanilla, and unless they add a bunch of them at 60, it’s a waste. Demonic grace is OK as a replacement. You can snapshot it to try to get a fat haunt crit, and dodge is nice when pulling multiple enemies. Incinerate for dungeons (unless tanking).

For leveling, haunt is better imo than metamorphosis (unless tanking dungeons). With haunt + master channeler, you’ll never have to stop to drink ever and can still handle 3 mobs at a time if you know what you’re doing.

6

You can tank 5 at a time with meta, if you know what you’re doing. Especially with hellfire.

7

What are you gonna do with that channeled spell with 5 mobs beating on you?

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Pretty sure most people that play meta locks not that good thats why he said hellfire. I really do hope locks go meta tho for horde since they a lot easier to beat than the annoying huant build locks that don’t die

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Not sure you realize how brutal spell pushback is in vanilla. With 5 enemies you’ll be lucky to get off 1 tick for a astronomical mana cost.

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Meta
Demonic pact (cause tbh for the chain pulling everything in sight theres nothing actually better…)
Master Channeler.

Straight down affliction, the extra life from demonic embrace isnt necessary. Unless you are pulling more mobs then you should and eating after every pull and barely suriving.

Just meta up, and start grabbing things. Can honestly do 6-7 equal level mobs at a time if I rotate drain life correctly.

Spec, straight down the affliction tree.

11

I can see a few set ups being good.

  1. Normal aff with haunt, master channeler
    Probably the fastest open world overall. BUT, for optimal efficiency you need to basically be chain pulling 2-3 mobs constantly. Better when mobs have distance between them

  2. Meta aff… Instead of haunt you grab meta and either grace or our everlasting affliction (the cleave effect that sbolt turns into will refresh your corruptions on multiple mobs) . The goal here is to do big pulls and physically tank them all. It’ll be the easiest build on the list.

  3. Destro (with lots of rune options)
    Chaos bolt and incinerate are both rune abilities and cost way less mana than normal spells, and always upgrade each level. Beyond those Demonic grace can give massive crit on a burst combo (you’d lose incinerate though) every 20 sec… You could also go meta/incinerate (skipping chaos bolt) for the tankier lock (since you WILL have aggro as Destro) but more importantly the lifetap efficiency gain and instant searing pain.

You’ll be a pure single target spec as destro, but your time to kill will be dramatically faster

Also worth pointing out that destro builds will dungeon cleave better via bane talent lowering sbolt cast time for faster shadow bolt volley spam early on, and later with more fire damage talents/gear more traditional rain of fire (glyphed) and hellfire (which will be common in mage aoe cleave sm groups)

Not sure there’s a wrong answer between aff or destro tbh. Both should be very good leveling specs

12

If you plan to do this you’ll have to spec into Destro for reduced spell pushback on Hellfire/Rain of Fire.

It definitely won’t work with speccing Affliction as you said.

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Pushback in Classic for a warlock is absolutely devastating, it makes you consider ever going destruction outside a raid or dungeon. Its garbage for leveling, farming and even pvp until you either get your R9 set or simply pray you never get attacked. Its the main reason i support a Dual spec in SOD despite not even liking the idea.
Affliction is superior for any form of leveling, no there’s no aoe hellfire leveling even with both ranks unless your rolling with a concentration pally or an earth shield shaman, your spell will be almost immediately cancelled and you will have burned a ton of mana.

14

Alright, alright, I get it, straight affliction with nightfall for refreshing corruption on chain pulls, should be good.

15

I dunno, I leveled fire destro and it was super fun. 1 incinerate, 1 chaos bolt, then 1 more incinerate and everything would die.

16

Isn’t Demonic Grace 20% melee crit?

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It’d be pretty terrible if it only applied to melee… Even meta barely melee attacks.

18

For PvP, the more I’ve studied this, the more Invocation looks BiS. And complete destro. Not even getting insta corruption.

Reapply immolate at 5 seconds, to burst those 5 seconds, and then instantly conflag the new immolate, finish with a shadow burn. That dynamic is going to pump a lot of DPS.

Especially if we get backdraft.

19

It justs says “bonus crit to your attacks.”

20

Well it works on spells too… and frankly wouldn’t make any sense not to.