Class: Warlock

Theme


Mages have always found an important part of the society they work in, but mages crave power. And when they turn to other potential sources of power, they might find some...more sinister, more questionable places to draw energy from. Warlocks are essentially mages that use demonic energies to fuel their powers, including the use of an enslaved demon. Their actual spells are a good bit different.
Class capabilities


Weapon proficiencies:

• Staff
  
• Daggers (starting weapon)
  
• Swords
  
• Wands
  

Armor proficiencies:

• Cloth
  

Warlocks are considered a DPS class, being most renowned among the classes for abilities dealing damage over time. They also have pets that are good for different situations, unlike the hunter's pets that are essentially all the same. Warlocks have some very good crowd control options, and are a surprisingly robust and diverse class.
The three focal areas for warlocks are Affliction, Demonology, and Destruction. Affliction spells focus on suffering and causing pain and misery across time. Destruction is more oriented toward spells that have immediate effects, or are fire-based. Demonology is focused on the warlock's pets and on other items they can summon or conjure.
Strengths and Weaknesses


Although not a hybrid class, warlocks have a lot of versatility. They can deal damage directly or over time to a large number of targets. They can fear, banish and seduce to manage battles against multiple opponents. They can regain mana at the expense of health, and regain health through "healthstones" they create and by siphoning it from their opponents. The class also gets a free mount at level 40 called a Felsteed.
However, they are not invincible, contrary to some popular opinions. They only wear cloth armor, making them susceptible to physical damage. (Warlocks often wear high stamina gear to offset this since they are less mana-dependent than other casters.) Additionally, many of their abilities require a Soul Shard which can only be obtained from killing an opponent while channeling the Drain Soul ability. These consume a considerable amount of bag space to keep a decent supply of, and all pets except their basic imp require one to summon, making it difficult to get started if they have no shards.
Attributes
Stamina is one of the key Warlock attributes, especially for Demonology Warlocks. The main reason for this is that a Warlock can convert his health to mana through the spell Life Tap, thus allowing Stamina to mostly fill the role for Intellect as well. Many Warlocks also depend on large health pools as their main source of defense.
As a primary spell caster, the Warlock also has great use for all the standard caster attributes, such as Intellect and Spell damage. Consequently Warlocks have no use for Strength and also little use for Agility. Spirit regenerates health and mana for Warlocks very slowly, giving it no practical use when compared to abilities such as Life Tap and Dark Pact. The value of Spell crit depends on the talent build. With Ruin and the use of direct damage spells, it is very good. But for an Affliction Warlock that mostly uses DoTs, it is worth very little. The Demonology talent, Demonic Knowledge, gives the Warlock bonus spell damage of an amount equal to 5/10/15 percent of their active demon's Stamina + Intellect, which are bolstered by the Warlock's own Stamina and Intellect values.
In a raid scenario, Spell hit rating becomes significantly more valuable, taking precedence over all other stats and it is advisable that you reach the spell hit rating cap (16%; 202 hit rating). After this point, however, spell hit rating is useless.
The value of item attributes varies greatly for Warlocks depending on their talent choices and their main focus in the game whether it be leveling, raiding or PvP. Below is an example of the Attribute values for a raiding Warlock (in descending order).
Affliction
Spell hit (until capped with Suppression) > Spell damage > Spell haste & Spell Crit
Demonology
Spell hit > Spell damage > Spell Haste > Spell Crit
Destruction
Spell hit > Spell Damage > Spell Crit > Spell Haste
In PvP for Warlocks the focus is some what different as survivability takes precedence often forcing Warlocks to greatly sacrifice DPS in order to obtain higher survivability in high end arena regardless of talent choice although all these stats have to be balanced relative to each other for the best results.
Resilience (until the 400+) > Stamina (until 12k-13k hp) > Spell Damage > Spell Crit
Group roles and expectations


Warlocks deal damage, however they have to be careful not to DoT any targets that are to be crowd controlled. Indeed, warlocks are often responsible for doing the crowd control themselves.
It is expected that a warlock will try to provide their group with healthstones, and also to perform a Ritual of Summoning to bring far-flung party members to the group. While this second option is less important with the presence of meeting stones, it is still an ability that can be useful.
Class Quests


Most warlock quests are themed after getting each new pet. At a very early level, warlocks will acquire a small task to learn how to summon an imp. At levels 10, 20, and 30 come quests to learn to summon a Voidwalker, Succubus, and Felhunter. At levels 60, the warlock gets a quest that allows them to upgrade their Felsteed to a Dreadsteed, which is an epic ground mount.
Soulshards and what they mean to you as a new warlock


A large number of the Warlock's skills and spells rely Soul Shard reagent. They are obtained by using the Drain Soul spell. To create a soul shard, the warlock must be channeling this spell as the target dies. Only targets that would give experience (or honor in the case of a PvP target) to the warlock will yield a Soul Shard.
Shadowburn (talent) also creates a soul shard if the enemy dies within five seconds of casting it if the target rewards experience, reputation or honor, but since it also costs a shard to cast, the net effect is zero shards (or less if the cast is mistimed or spell is resisted).
Soul Shards are used to summon all minions except for the imp. They are used to enslave demons, cast many high level spells (such as Soul Fire), and create Healthstones, Soulstones, Firestones, and Spellstones. Additionally, they are required for the Ritual of Summoning spell that allows a Warlock to summon party members to the Warlock's location.