They're all viable builds, suited more towards one's personal play style than one single "You must go this exact spec to level" cookie cutter build. One additional point: How many harder content quests are there per zone versus the "Kill 20 of X and come back to me. Great, now go kill 20 of Y." quests out there?

I soloed my way through level 67 only grouping up for exactly 3 quests (the final red crystal giant in HFP, the elite naga bosses in Zangarmarsh, and the mini ouro in Terrokar) and when in instances. Sure having a Felguard helps with quests like that, but being able to kill 10 mobs at once and then be able to pull another 10 as soon as you're done looting has it's virtues as well.

Well, I've found that affliction with 4/5 or 5/5 suppression is very very useful for doing instances with bosses 4 or 5 levels higher than you. A +4 boss is no big deal with 5/5 supression and some reasonable %hit gear (5%). Just stay away from shadowbolt it won't hit much. A +5 boss is rough, but enough dots stick and drain life sticks often enough. -- and drain life has no partial resists. I did this mostly with a shadow priest around as another dpser (who also had massive +%hit from talents).

Endlessly amusing that these threads mostly end in "Yup, all the builds rock, and what's more, they generally rock at everything, even if one is just slightly more useful in certain situations". Welcome to the Balanced Class!

EDIT: For levelling, I remembered on talent CAN make a major change: shadow burn. If you're working in crowded areas, sometimes the quests involve tapping mobs that have respawns which are not as fast as one may desire (Gan'arg servants / Razorsaw, Illidari Taskmasters, Ravagers, Bog Lords and so forth). In most of these situations I was extremely happy to have an instant spell to spam as soon as I was in range / the mob spawned. It's not a big deal, but it's a plus while levelling.

Dark pact + Ruin makes me feel like a tiny god. Can't stand demonology because I need pet independence (the ability to swap imp/succy/fel with no repercussion), can't stand not having destructive reach and ruin.

To be honest once you get Fel Armor you're a machine regardless of how you spec. 500+ ticks from bandages means you can just reset your health once a minute even if you have some sort of grossly inefficient build.

Sort of off-topic (though what I actually thought was the topic after reading the subject), but I am cosidering 1-70 leveling builds, PvE server, 50% solo questing, 50% group questing/instances.

I had previously been under the impression that a straight rush through Affl toward DP was the preferred grinding spec pre 60, but I was curious if new talents have changed any opinions on the matter. I will post some possible level by level builds later, but I was wondering what the greater minds thought on the subject.

Affliction to at least 31 is just about mandatory. Leveling is about minimizing your down time, and drain tanking allows you to do that. Once you get Dark Pact it's like "what's downtime?". It will also significantly help out newer healers who aren't used to watching a warlock's health bar when they're not being hit by a mob. Also, going Affliction vs. Destruction means that you won't be pulling aggro off of your voidwalker as much as spiky damage from SB+Ruin can.

Once you get to Dark Pact (level 41) you can choose to go Destruction for some Shadowbolt action and Shadowburn for a great finisher, or you can go further into Affliction for the gem Improved Howl of Terror or even farther for Unstable Affliction.

My choice would be, in this order:
5/5 Improved Corruption
2/2 Soul Siphon
2/2 Improved Life Tap
2/2 Improved Drain Soul
4/5 Fel Concentration (come back to this later)
3/3 Empowered Corruption
2/2 Grim Reach
1/1 Siphon Life
1/5 Shadow Embrace (1 point is all you need until endgame raiding)
2/2 Nightfall
1 more point in Fel Concentration
5/5 Shadow Mastery
1/1 Dark Pact

Then either into Destruction with:
5/5 Imp SB
5/5 Bane
1/1 Shadowburn

Or deeper in Affliction to:
Either 4/5 Contagion or
1/1 Amplify Curse +
1/1 Curse of Exhaustion +
2/5 Suppression
Then get
2/2 Improved Howl of Terror.

Is anyone NOT having threat issues in 5 mans? Granted I haven't even seen a paladin or shaman in any of my groups, but I am soloing at least one mob a pull. This is with druids, warriors, all specs and sizes. All of them with excellent gear.

I've mostly been running with a druid used to playing with me. I dot up every mob, even when there are ~6. (level 63 tank, average party level 62 now, was 61.5 or so yesterday).

We routinely pull 2 trash packs at once in underbog/slave pens, sometimes 3. Lots of rage + swipe then 1 or 2 dots each from me then ramping it up to more later. Well geared feral with 35% crit and dodge, maxing stam and AP/crit more than AC (still 15k AC). Also, this tank uses the fire reflect trinket off rags (amazing trinket in the right situation that most tanks think sucks). Sometimes, I pull one, but they're easy to solo and drain tank or its almost dead. The group is also comfortable with fear when necessary (oops, 3 trash packs in slave pens, priest + warlock fear rotation and pull back... no wipe).


Paladins have been around of late, and I can tell the difference. Without them I put one dot up on each mob that I know has been hit by swipe right away, and 2 if i'm ca(not full hp). With them, 2 dots or 3. With a warrior, i stick to one target more carefully and add dots to the other targets after longer than usual into the fight.

Paladin + Shadow Priest + warlock (+ tank + anything else) is the ideal in my recent experience with my spec as a warlock. Extra damage + lower threat + endless mana supply for the paladin due to VE is amazing. Both dps classes can go really high in %hit gear and talents and take on much higher level content too. With a druid tank, in an 'oh crap' moment an AoE fear (or 2) + innervate on the priest is amazing.

But I'm sure there are other deadly synergistic combos out there, i'm just fond of mine. :D

In the 5 man group that I put together it's always a Durid tank, Rogue, SPriest, and either a pally or holy/disc priest for the 5th man. With regards to aggro, I always get it - but then again, I do all the pulling. The bad news: If you're doing your best to do maximum DPS on multiple target pulls (as just about every one in the first 4 instances you come to will be), you will be pulling some aggro. The good news: You're a warlock. You're designed to take a licking and keep on (DOT) ticking.

In 5 or more target pulls, I am always a designated offtank with the Durid as the MT and the rogue incapacitating one mob. I make liberal use of fear in the first 4 instances, and it makes all the difference in the world. I was doing double and triple pulls in Ramparts last night for fun, just because with a SPriest, Holy Priest, and me (37/0/16 so far)... we can. 3 Sequenced instant AOE fears is just overpowered, provided you plan for it correctly. I also have a metric ton of healing going on between VE, Siphon Life, and Drain Life on my fear-spammed target. Add in the 20% increased healing from Fel Armor and I never have a problem with staying alive.

When the pally is in my group I get Wisdom, not Salvation.

There's a lot of really disturbing synergy for small group tactics. The cat-druid Maim finisher does not break on dot damage... :highfive:

Personally I do pull alot of aggro, so much so that I've got used to just soloing a mob down through drain tanking per pack. This worked great until I hit the Underbog and tried to do it to those Giants near the start >.>

This has been with both extremely well geared and experienced Druid/Warrior tanks, so I put it down to having spent over a year raiding, 6 months of that with BoS, meaning I've completely lost my ability/too lazy to exercise my ability to control aggro.

Just a note to update:

I've hit 64 and have Incinerate now.

Still Demo/Affliction (11/44/0).

This is an AWESOME spec for soloing and 5 mans still. Especially 5 mans.

Last night doing Pens/Underbog I was using my Felguard as an OT for some pulls. He has around 60% damage reduction (6.1k armor and 15% from DR) from physical and does fine. I'd send him to his target DoT it up, then Corr, Imm and Incin the main target. By the time we get around to killing the guards target it's mostly dead from the DoTs.

Every instance run I've done so far I have been over 40% of the groups damage when my pet was included. Also, the Felguard has been able to Tank all of HFR except for the last boss (give him a couple seconds and a competent player won't pull aggro) when I did a run w/o a warrior.

I'm also at 7k hp with the Demo buffs, and +626damage with Fel Armor and DK. I don't think affliction cant touch this for damage and utility. Destro can't get ANYWHERE near the mana efficiency without the super drain life (and super DoTs).

Currently about halfway through 64, and I am 41/0/15. Soloing is fun now that I can tag mobs easily with shadowburn, and finish off with rank 1 drain soul for the free 800 mana, and not fill up my bag slots in 10 minutes with shards.

I've been running 5 mans as much as possible, I've cleared Ramparts/Furnace a dozen times each, and Slave Pens and Underbog 1-2 times each. Aggro can be a problem, but since almost everything is fearable, it's not an issue. Yo-yo kiting with fear and curse of recklessness lets you solo a mob or two in each pull, and often kill them before the rest of the group finishes off the other mobs.

Fel Armor is crazy. I've had Drain Life ticks of 350 along with Deathcoil heals of over 800 and Siphon Life ticks for over 200. This is with +715 shadow with just the armor on. Can't wait for the next few levels; new dots should be a godsend. Soulshatter looks to be insanely useful in 5 mans also, I'm looking forward to it.

One thing that I will point out is the important of Suppression, as others have mentioned. I only have 2 points in it, which is plenty for leveling on +2 mobs. On my first run in the Slave Pens though, I was either 60 or 61, and trying to land spells on the 65 bosses was terrible. Now that I'm 64 though, it's still very easy, although shadowbolt does get resisted fairly often. I only have 1-2% of +hit on my gear though; if you have more of it, along with some spell penetration, it might not be as big a deal.

Do yourselves a favor and get out of Hellfire/Zangarmarsh as soon as possible. You can pick up most of the Tero Forest quests at 63, and they are a lot more efficient than the ones in the previous 2 zones. Being able to stay in 1 spot and complete 2-3 quests by pulling the same mobs does wonders for the time it takes for leveling. Being ahead of the curve is nice also; much less competition and no waiting in line to kill uncommon spawn mobs.

A quick note about pulling aggro, it's the dots that are causing it (as opposed to doing the same dps with DD spells). On quick glance you might think slower, ticking damage would be easier to tank but on these multi target low rage (as soon as they're not all hitting the tank) pulls it becomes almost useless to try and taunt once one of them gets loose. If the tank doesn't land 2 sunders in a snap then the mob is ticking straight back to the warlock. If you nuked for 150k damage I could taunt and have the mob but once you start ticking enough dot damage it becomes impossible to tank "casually" anymore.

I've been levelling my warlock more than my main (priest) or main-alt (hunter) since BC came out. I've gotten him to level 53 via the affliction/drain tanking route but with the number of viable soloing build available to a warlock I'm wondering if I should try to branch out a bit more. With respect to the Demo builds here, what is a good soloing build because I haven't seen anyone link one yet (either that or I'm blind/stupid) and I've never taken anything past Demonic Embrace.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=NZfxczhizzxst
Then Imp. Corruption / Mana Feed / Demonic Resilience, your choice.

I switched to Demo recently, I send in Felguard, then use Corruption, CoA, Shadow Bolt, Drain Life/Life Tap, Wand if needed and then Drain Life to get the mana proc.

Once I get Incinerate, I may change up my sequence.

Each kill takes 5-7 seconds. Send Imp, Shadowbolt, Shadowbolt, loot.

imp->Shadowbolt->drain life->loot works about as well.

Currently building to 0/40/21

On beta i went 41/0/10, hit up shadowburn then demonic embrace. I thought about going some sort of SM/DS variation this time round since i mainly only use drain/siphon/corruption/coa but ended up sticking with ua/shadowburn once again. I dont find myself using UA to grind as much sa i would like because of the casting time but its nice in instances and pvp, along with the talents you get between it and shadow mastery.

I've tried out a couple different builds for leveling, and ended up with 30/21/0 +10 (as I level up). Which is actually the same build I ended up with when I was 60 the first time. I'll probably switch it around to include some more destro once I hit 70, or at least once I start spending most of my time in instances.

Right now it's great for my playstyle, I sac the VW, and as long as I can find enough targets and mindless kill quests (the nessing way quests were perfect) I can pretty much grind constantly.

If anyone has any average xp/hour numbers for their build, I'd love to see them. Right now depending how long I spend screwing around in between quests my average ranges from a low of 50k/hour up to a high of about 92k/hour. Which seems a little low to me, I'm guessing I might just be taking too long to kill each mob, even though the time seems to fly by. I'm thinking about giving up some affliction for more destruction, but I'd like to compare some numbers before I respec again.

Well, I tried demo yesterday and just couldn't stick with it. Felguard is fun, but with a x/44/0 build, it seemed like he was taking a bit too much damage, and I ended up having to health funnel him every couple pulls. I was getting higher ticks out of Corruption/Agony, and higher base nuke damage, but it still just didn't add up. Went back to 41/0/x and am loving it. I miss seeing +825 shadow damage in my character window, but eyecandy isn't everything. Dark Pact, Siphon Life, Instant HoT, and the free 800 mana back whenever you drain a soul is just too much to give up for grinding.

As far as xp/hour, I did all of 64 in 6 hours /played, with 0 rested. Did it in Terokkar Forest, started with the Bone Waste quests at the two caravans, then did all of the horde town ones.

I leveled 60-68 as a non-UA affliction build - 40/x/0 (added to demo as I leveled). I would average around 110k xp/hour solo questing, although I leveled to 70 in beta so I knew what to do for every quest and didnt even read any of the text :) Generally I would corruption, CoA, siphon life, then switch targets until I have 4-5 mobs tapped. I would throw in drain life and dark pacts to manage health/mana (goal was to finish in 20 secs all mobs with full health/mana).

I am going to try 68-70 as a demo build with felguard, just for variety. Will report in a day or two how I find the difference.

Oh heres the build I am going to try (last leveling points for fel concentration in affliction), I have enslave demon due to the variety of demons in the last few zones, have fel concentration because without it I find drain life/soul is way to short in many situations, and want imp imp in case I have to bust out the imp for instances, he can be a monster DPSer especially with imp imp:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000