Affliction Warlock Leveling Guide From 1 to 80 for WotLK Classic

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Leveling your Warlock as Affliction is all about your damage over time abilites. Corruption is the most powerful DoT in the game and, thanks to Siphon Life, you heal for 40% for all of the damage dealt by Corruption, making this the most important spell in your spellbook. The sooner you get this on your target, the sooner you start to heal. The best part of this spell is that the more Corruption you apply, the more healing you will recieve. For this reason, you want to put Corruption on as many targets as you can to benefit from the massive amount of healing you get. Depending on your gear level, often times Corruption will be enough to finish off the enemies. However, that's not the same for boosted Warlocks.

Curse of Agony is the perfect pairing DoT to go with Corruption if you don't have gear or if you have been boosted. The long DoT duration, mixed with the power and self healing of Corruption, makes these two DoTs a deadly combination. Curse of Agony is a ramping DoT, meaning it does very little damage at first, but ends up hitting harder than most other DoT's in the game towards the end. Place Corruption followed by Curse of Agony on every target for maximum damage. If you find yourself pulling 6+ targets at once, apply Corruption on all enemies followed by Curse of Agony. This will give you all the self heals ticking before you start spreading your Agonies. If you're fighting anything under 5 targets, you should not need to worry about incoming damage. You can simply Corruption into Curse of Agony on one mob, repeated for all mobs in the pack.

Unstable Affliction is not used often, as it has a cast time, but it's still good for any higher HP targets. It may be used to open with it on some targets if you feel like standing still and casting it. Haunt is rarely used when leveling, however this spell can be very helpful if you find yourself either pulling too much, fighting high HP mobs, elite mobs or if you want the healing from it. If you find yourself not using Haunt often, feel free to remove the points from Everlasting Affliction and Haunt and put them into the Demonology tree.

Warlocks have a very powerul AoE in Seed of Corruption, however the best way to AoE while leveling out in the open world is simply to Corruption and Curse of Agony everything around you. When the mobs get close to you, a few ticks or Hellfire tend to finish them off all while barely hurting you at all due to the insane self heals coming from Siphon Life and Fel Armor.

Your Demon choice depends largely on your personal preference. Each Demon has its own strengths and utility, all viable in their own way.

The rework on Sacrifice, which takes a portion of your Voidwalkers Health and gives you absorb for a ton of damage, is extrememly useful. You can pop this while you have Corruption ticking and you'll see your Health shoot right back up to full. Voidwalker also has the ability to AoE taunt, reducing the chance all enemies hit by 10%, further improved by the talent, Demonic Brutality. All of this combined makes this the go-to pet for Affliction leveling.

The Felhunter deals above average damage thanks to their new spell, Shadow Bite, while bringing you the most utility out of the demons with its ability to interrupt Spells with Spell Lock and purge any nasty debuffs off you or your target with Devour Magic.

The Succubus, or Incubus, are great pets that remain an integral part of a Warlock's aresenal, as they do excellent damage while not needing to use their Mana to do so. Thanks to Dark Pact, this allows you to use the Succubus as a permanent source of Mana.

The Imp is a stong pet, however is usually used only for Destruction.

Warlocks have a ton of spells and demon Grimoires to buy. It can become daunting to think about which ones are worth getting. To keep it simple, you want to buy all ranks of spells that you find yourself using out in the open world. You can skip a bunch of spells if you want to save gold and make it less confusing. Some spells that you can skip training until level 80 are listed below in order of which they become available on your trainer.

• Curse of Weakness
• Searing Pain
• Ritual of Summoning
• Rain of Fire
• Eye of Kilrogg
• Curse of Tongues
• Detect Invisibility
• Banish
• Subjugate Demon
• Curse of the Elements
• Create Firestone
• Soul Fire
• Curse of Doom
• Incinerate
• Soulshatter
• Ritual of Souls

Setting up a user interface and macros early on you will greatly improve the quality of your leveling experience. Check out the Warlock Macros and Addons guides in the links below for the full list.

Once you achieve Level 80, we suggest checking out our Affliction Warlock Guide which goes more in detail of how to play your Level 80 Warlock.