How do/did you level your lockFollow

i lvl'd my lock demo all the way, tho i'm pretty sure affliction is a bit faster, cause with that imp.drain life you really can't get oom, meaning you dont have to stop

I like drain hunting, so I am working on a demo build with an eye towards getting my felguard. I've thrown a few points into affl and destro based on a 7/43/11 build I read about on WoWHead. So far I'm pretty happy with it, although as Stallob said it is probably not the fastest leveling build.

A typical fight for me is send in VW --> Corruption --> CoA (or CoT if going against a caster) --> Shadow Bolt --> Life Tap --> Drain Health, stopping to drink and eat every 5-10 mobs. The downtime is really pretty minimal.

10-64 as affliction with the voidwalker. At around that time, my spell damage was beginning to outperform what my voidwalker could produce in threat. From there, I learned how to drain tank, and used an extensive Aff build, subbing in demo (Imp. HS, Imp. Imp and Demonic Embrace).

When I happen to play around with Destruction, it becomes a lot more situational as to which pet I'm going to use. Felhunter for Spell Lock suddenly becomes a lot more appealing vs. non-humanoid caster mobs, succubus for the extra cc in tight areas, imp when you just crit everything to death, voidwalker for AoE spam.

I did affliction until lvl 58, then went feln00b to 70.

Going Demo the entire way, lvl 63 now and loving it.

Destruction all the way, I didnt see much of an increase in leveling until I got shadoweave, now I can kill faster then my friend and he has a 55 lock (aff spec), might be because he is a noob or what ever you wanna use as an excuse. But once you start getting all the +dmg gear you start to see a massive difference in how fast those mobs die.

Need to drink every 3-4 mobs (without life tap 5-6 with) healing is 7+ because of Soul Leach (Rank 3).

Lets watch the name calling against me now lol XD

I likes me drain tanking. Tried felguard at 66 didn't like it as much. Afflic 1-70.

I started my lock a few weeks after vanilla WoW came out, and managed to level him to 40 with a god aweful spec. It only took me forever to get there. Then I took a career mandated break from WoW (Navy ships have horrible internet access for gaming), when I came back my lock sat dormant while I leveled my BE Hunter(guild issues). When I came back to my lock I decided to do it right and started doing alot of research on what I should be doing with my lock, and after a quick change to Affliction, 40-70 just flew by. It didn't hurt that I had learned how to level(apparently this is very important if you want to level fast).

I leveled pre-bc as affliction til 60. Then went SM/Ruin. When BC came out I leveled again as affliction and it was awesomely easy. No down time and the ability to chain pull mobs. Killing 3-4 mobs at a time was easy. 5-6 only a little challenging. I have tried all the builds at 70 and cant imagine leveling up in the expansion as anything other than 51/0/10+ With haunt you wont ever even need to drain life while leveling. Just pull 2-3 mobs, DoT, Haunt, LifeTap, Laugh, move on at full mana and health.

I am now lvl 65 and have been and will be Affliction until the very end, and beyond probably. I have been using the Instant Howl of Terror, multimob grinding method since I obtained it, and wouldn't lvl any other way really. For anyone not familiar with the method what you do is slap an enemy with all your instant cast dots while running to the next mob, slap that one with all your instant casts dots while running to the next one (use your maximum range and run away from the enemy while dotting, heading towards one hopefully behind you), do this until you have 4 to 5 enemies, then cast howl of terror. I normally only manage to get 4 enemies before the first enemy is nearly dead. After Howl of Terror, Drain Life mobs as needed to regain lost health. I normally Life Tap between each mob while en route to the next. This works best when the enemies are not so far away from each other that you outrange enemies, because then it's a waste, but after getting a little practice with it you can grind thru lvls so fast it is ridiculous. Also note that you will need Siphon Life and a good amount of +spell dmg gear for this to work, and to be honest I did this as soon as I got Howl of Terror, not even with it as instant, 1.5 cast time isn't really that long. Experimentation will show you where the best places this work are located.

Up until then I did Fear/dot kiting, which is simply amazing for lvling in my opinion, I went from 0 to 40 in about 50 hours of gameplay, which was about 3 weeks of playing the game. Personally I was fearing 3 enemies at a time while keeping dots on them, I would generally get an add at some point and start the fear/dot process on them as well, a couple seconds later the first target I had would die and I would start another mob. Generally keeping 4 targets up at any point and time is great, life tapping between dot rotations and fears helps to even out the mana flow, and draining soul on the target with the lowest health to keep your mana up is great too. Once you have Dark Pact and Howl of Terror you can switch to Howl of Terror grinding, but you will need to regear. Use high Sta/Int gear while slowly building up some +spell dmg gear, a good balance of the three works best in my opinion.

As for my pet... I never really payed much attention to them, Imp runs out of mana too fast, but is good until you get Succubus. Once you have Succubus you are set, turn off all her auto abilitys except Lash of Pain and go to town, send her in if she pulls more enemies along the way expand your fear dot rotation.

- Del

Edited, Aug 11th 2008 3:03pm by Delofasht

My lock (my main) was my first character also. I leveled as affliction... i guess i was lucky that time because i didnt read anywhere if affliction is better or faster... i just found it more interesting. So, from 1 to 60 i went affliction.
preTBC when the new talents were added i respec Demo (like most of locks back then). I even raided as Demo then :P

So i went Demo/Aff till 70. After that i specced deep affliction till i caped my Hit and i was able to take some crit gear from T5 raids. I after that i went Destro and i'm still specced that way atm.

From 1-60, I specced deep affliction for drain hunting...I really didn't use my pet very much since drain life and the mana bonus from improved drain soul would keep me pretty topped off. For tougher fights, I would use the Blueberry for initial aggro or the Succy for extra takedown power.

I switched to the demo tree (FG) at 60 and leveled with him straight to 70. I still miss the ol' reliable Flatoom...These days, I am pretty much in cookie cutter SL/SL or destro specs.

Just started WoW at Xmas time, made a gnome warlock and by 16 Jan he is 77. Went with Demon build with a few points in affliction and destruction for the talents that seemed most useful. 98% of that leveling was solo, just doing quests and the xp gained killing mobs doing those quests. Using Voidwalker almost exclusively I've had few problems killing even elites with 40khps, though they have to be solo kills. Any mob of equal level up to 3 levels higher is no issue, 2 and even 3 mobs aren't much of a worry. Typical encounter is...send Void and wait a few seconds, CoA, Corruption, Immolate, wait til mob is between 75 and 50% and open up with the wand...if that's a bit short I'll add another Corruption and resume the wand, swapping with Life Tap if needed.

On an elite or named with high hps I'll CoA and Corruption and use health funnel to keep VW alive, recasting as necessary and keep an eye on threat levels, may be a slow way to kill, but the mob dies and I live. Near the end I'll re-cast all dots and use Life Tap and wand to hasten the end.

If I'm careful then aggro is simply not an issue. I've no doubt I'll need to change my play style when moving to groups and raids but Demon was one hell of a fun way to level my 'lock.

I don't know Armory or other ways to link my build, went to Meta in Demon and then added points in Destruction and Affliction that seemed most beneficial. Dunno if I did this in any way similar to those before me but it worked for me so /shrug.

Barbacin 77 Gnome Warlock
Nazgrel