So you want to be an Affliction warlock, huh? You probably thought it would be nice and easy, just toss a couple of damage over time spells up, watch the mob’s health tick down, collect your loot and go. Imagine your surprise when your Voidwalker couldn’t hold aggro through your ridiculous damage, and when you tried to compensate by Fear-kiting, you spent as much time life-tapping and bandaging as you did fighting.

So how do you do it right? Well, unfortunately there is no magic bullet for leveling an affliction warlock, and that’s doubly true when you’re picking up new spells and talents every level or two. However, there are a few tricks that you can take on that will help you handle situations that get a bit out of control and will let you make the most of your grinding time. This guide is aimed at players at or above level 40, since that is when you will have the talents and spells necessary to truly call yourself an affliction warlock.

1. Keep your Imp out, and make sure he’s phased out and on passive. Regardless of how you’ve treated him up until now, your Imp’s sole job past level 40 is to buff you and be your mana battery. You should only ever have to Life Tap in really tough situations.

2. Curse of Agony and Corruption are your “priority” spells. Get Curse of Agony up first since it’s your longest running DoT and gets more powerful the closer it is to finishing, and Corruption is your best scaling DoT, so it should always be up. Anything else is cake, as between those and Drain Life you should be fine for damage and healing.

3. Got multiple mobs? No worries. Use Fear, Curse of Agony, Corruption, and Siphon Life on your unwelcome guest while you drain tank the first mob. Keep fear up on the second and you shouldn’t have to worry about much, but if you get an unlucky resist, feel free to use Death Coil to send him back on his merry way.

4. In terms of gear priority, spell power over pretty much everything else, followed by stamina. Reason being, you want to kill things as quickly as possible, and your Stamina is pretty much your mana reserve that you can easily refill in combat.

Congratulations. By choosing an Affliction warlock, you chose one of the fastest classes in the game to level. You can take on more than one mob at a time, you do disgusting damage, and downtime is a myth. If you use the tips I provided you, you’ll be burning through the mobs.

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