Classic TBC Warlock Phase 1 Guide - How To Build A Warlock In WoW TBC

In today's WoW Classic TBC Warlock guide, we're going to show you how to set up your warlock right from the start of the Burning Crusade phase 1. We'll kick this guide off with which race you'll want to play on, either faction into talents gearing and professions followed lastly with some tips and tricks and even what compositions you'll be wanting to play in arena season 1.

Classic TBC Warlock Phase 1 Guide - How To Build A Warlock In WoW TBC

Warlocks are one of the most popular casters for PVP in the Burning Crusade and it's not hard to understand why. They've got incredible overall damage, they're super durable, and have a ton of utility and crowd control at their disposal. These strengths allow warlock to perform in all brackets of the arena. Giving them a bunch of different compositions and specs that they can do well with. 

WoW TBC Classic Warlock Race

The horde sign has two very strong races for warlock, these are undead and orc. As an orc, you get some very strong ratios first of which and the main reason to go orc is hardiness. Hardiness unlike on retail gives you a 15% increased chance to fully resist stunts. With rogues being so popular, this can give you a lot of value. But there is an rng element attached.

Aside from hardiness, the other two noteworthy racial are blood fury which gives you some increased spell damage but adds a cause of healing reduction, and commands which gives your pet a small boost of damage. Whereas undead on the other hand, aside from making you feel like you're in a PVP movie provides you with most importantly will the forsaken. This is because warlocks and warriors are incredibly popular and will of the forsaken just essentially gives you a free trinket allowing you to not only break out of fear and charm effects but also be immune for 5 seconds, alongside will you've got cannibalized underwater breathing and shadow resistance.

Out of these 3, the only one that really matters in the arena is going to be the added shadow resistance. Again like rogues, warriors are very popular and this ratio just gives you a higher chance at resisting spells, depending on your enemy's spell pen. Out of the two horde races, the edge has to go to the undead. It's essentially the rng from hardiness versus the consistency of will of the forsaken.

Ratios are undoubtedly a lot weaker. Our two recommended races are human or known. Humans aside from extra rep gains to help you gear up a bit faster and some essentially useless spirit game. Perception at first glance doesn't seem that good, but once you realize rogues will be extremely popular, perception actually does provide you with a ton of value. You pop this in the opener and you'll be able to more than likely see the rogue before they're able to get a clean opener.

Gnome has two useful ratios. The expansive mind provides you with a flat 5% bonus to intellect giving you some added mana and spell crit. Escape artist allows you to as the name suggests escape routes and slows. But in TBC, it's a little weaker. The reason for this is that you can get resists meaning you're not going to remove the root or slow out of the two alliance side races, we'd recommend going with gnome. But honestly, it's not a major difference so just pick what you like the look of.

WoW TBC Classic Warlock Talent Points

Warlock is very much defined by one cookie-cutter spec, the combination of picking up soul link combined with siphon life. Putting 36 points into demonology, all the way down to soul length. 25 points into the affliction of the siphon life. The only real adaptation to this build is swapping a couple of points out of demonic resilience and instead of putting them into mana feed. What you're getting is a trade-off between some extra durability from demonic resilience which is great for wdps warlock compositions. Whereas mana feed on the other hand is great for longer games, giving your pet less chance of running out of mana, you may have heard the term slsl warlock.

What that is is the combination of soul link combined with siphon life. Siphon life gives you that extra damage over time effect as well as healing and soul link is what makes warlock so durable. Without this, you won't be having that much fun in the arena. The other interesting talents you'll pick up along the way are master demonologists which give you some added resistance again, helping you to contribute to how durable you are. Foul domination to get a faster pet cast and curse of exhaustion giving you a reliable slow.

Aside from the pretty much mandatory and undeniably best spec of slsl. There are a couple more knee specs. The destruction which can be played in certain comms, but on low levels of crit and resilience is just not recommended early season in the arena, but nonetheless can provide some fun inside of non-competitive PVP. Then unstable affliction, so going heavy in the affliction tree this time, this gives you some added damage and also protection against the spells. But obviously though in doing so, you drop soul link, and once again, early season, low resilience is not recommended.

WoW TBC Classic Warlock Gear

This will purely be focused on the gear obtainable inside of phase 1. Warlock thankfully has very well itemized PVP gear, so you will want 4 pieces from the gladiator's dread weave set, combined with the fel weave helm, the gladiator spellblade, and the gladiator's touch of defeat one. All of which come from arena points. Outside of that, a large chunk of the gear comes from the honor vendor. So they can all potentially be farmed even before the arena season 1 is released. So you can instantly aim to farm your best in slot boots, neck, and coke, alongside obviously getting yourself a medallion. You could also pick up the PVP bracer and belt whilst doing so. 

But we recommend taking the unyielding set, this offers a far more defensive option that is also easier to obtain, as you can pick this up relatively cheap from tailors to then complement the gear set. You've got two items from badges of justice. You'll still need to be dabbling in PvE. These are the icon of the silver crescent, a must-have trinket, and the orb of the soul eater your best in the slot off hand. This can be obtained by collecting spirit shards inside tarakar forest and its surrounding dungeons

What would TBC be without a reputation farm after all? Your best slot ring which is ashyen's gift comes from cinarion expedition reputation. Thankfully most of your best gear can be target farmed or purchased. But arena gear is obtained with arena points which are time-gated. Whilst you're farming, a good alternative is the complete blue high warlord set. This can be purchased in full at the PVP honor vendor for a combination of battleground marks and honor. Then even better than that are certain pieces from karazhan if you're able to raid.

WoW TBC Classic Warlock Professions

Are there any must-haves for WoW TBC warlock PVP? Phase 1 will be missing the most important professional item for PVP, the engineering goggles. But there are still some benefits you can get from certain professions.

Engineering despite not having the goggles can give you access to both goblin rocket boosts for some niche situations as well as the nigh invulnerability belt. Although this can backfire like all engineering items, it still got its uses. In general, engineering is by no means required, but it's always nice to have access to certain gadgets or items even in other aspects of PVP. Then to pair up with engineering, you can pick up enchanting. This will provide you with a small boost in spell power as enchanters are able to enchant their own rings to give them 12 spell power. If you want to min-max, the one profession which is required though has to be first aid bandages in TBC are immensely strong. They heal for a lot and at the cost of nothing, so be sure to collect cloth level up your first aid, and have ample bandages ready for the arena.

WoW Classic TBC Warlock Macros

Getting focused on arena 123 macros is going to be extremely important at improving your gameplay inside of the arena. For warlock, we recommend having a way to easily cast fear, spell lock, devour magic, and death coil on either your focus or arena123, whichever you prefer. For ease of access, you could also choose to do the same with your damage over time effects. But this is far more preferable than anything else. Aside from those basics, you'll also want to make sure you have a way to easily control your pet. Something that's very important as a warlock. So make sure to have a pet attack and pets stay keyboard on your pet bar or as a macro. On the topic of your pet alongside your move commands, you will also need a way to easily devour your party members and yourself. So alongside your focus devour magic, you want either party 1 or the name of your teammate inside of a macro.

WoW Classic TBC Warlock Tips & Tricks

If you're new to the warlock in the Burning Crusade, not only do warlocks do immense dot damage while simultaneously being insanely durable. But they can also keep their teammates and themselves out of magic crowd control. Being one of three classes with the ability to dispel magic effects, this is done with their pet ability devour magic. If used on an enemy, it will purge. If used on a teammate, it will dispel a magic effect and you can even use this on yourself.

Another trick is with your ability to create spellstone. Spellstone creates an item that can be put in your one slot. What this does is dispel you from all harmful magic effects. So you start the game with this in your one slot dispel either all your dots or your roots or even cc, and then swap back to your wand instantly. Something useful to know for the early season is that resilience actually affects the effectiveness of your drain mana. The more resilient targets have the less effective this is. 

So early season when resilience levels are low. This will be an amazing tool to out attrition your enemies. Something also overlooked is how powerful the ability of unending breath actually is. But not for the underwater breathing. Why unending breath is strong is that it's a magical buff that costs only 50 mana. This can be used as a way to protect and cover important buffs you don't want purge, such as power word shield or even life bloom.

Lastly is the interaction between feldom and your pet's abilities. Basically felt domination as we explored earlier allows you to summon your pet very quickly. This will actually reset the cooldown of all your pet abilities. So what you can do is use spell lock or dvar magic, fell down another fell hunter out, and then instantly spell lock or devour magic again.

WoW TBC Classic Warlock Compositions

2v2

2v2 is one of the most popular brackets and luckily warlock is one of the best classes for it. You have 3 very strong compositions, the strongest of which and probably strongest in all of TBC period has to be warlock restoration druid. This composition has it all, insane crowd control, high consistent damage, great longevity, and the ability for your druid to constantly look for druids. Eventually whittling down your opponents and winning the war of attrition. A more offensive option and still very strong is swapping out the druid for a disciplined priest. This has less crowd control but makes up for it with the added damage and mana burn from the priests as well as offensive dispels.

But if double DPS is more your style, we've got our final composition for twos which is warlock sub rogue with high damage, great control, and just all-around an extremely fun composition to play.

3v3

3v3 warlock again has a vast array of compositions available. Warlock, warrior, druid, or even priest is one of the best all-around compositions. Three very durable targets all with very high damage. With the priest option being more offensive and the druid version defensive. Rod or rlp which is warlock rogue with either a priest or druid healer, this is a little more offensive having the extra stuns from a rogue allowing you to do some deadly setups. The last composition worth mentioning is a shadow play, so warlock, shadow priest paired up with either a restoration shaman or restoration druid. This is an extremely high damage composition. If you just like pumping out the damage and watching the enemy team rot. This will be one for you.

5v5

5v5 is back and alive in the Burning Crusade. For this, you've got a wide array of options. The two standard heaters are restoration druid and priest. Then you can look to play a more caster base composition with elemental and mage or shadow priest. Swap either of the casters out for a warrior or rogue and you've got a very good composition as well.

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