Mana Efficiency? Damage Efficiency? Help!! (Leveling a Warlock 36-70)

[enmar884]

Right now I'm in the process of leveling my 36 warlock to 70 with two of my friends simultaneously. While I don't expect to out-dps my rogue friend, I did expect to be doing a bit more damage, and losing a bit less mana. It seems half my spell casts are either Life Tap or Drain Life because using my simple DoT rotation burns away my mana. I'm leveling in a group with a rogue and a paladin. This is what I normally do:

Siphon>Curse of Agony>Corruption>LT>Drain>wand

or

Immolate>Curse of Agony>Corruption>LT>Drain>wand

The last time I played a warlock was around a year ago. It was level 29. I seemed to be cruising through MOBs endlessly, and never stopping for mana. Now I feel like this has change. No longer can I burn down a MOB or multiple MOBs without completely destroying my mana pool.

Come to think of it, I don't think I can burn down a MOB anymore. My spells seemed to be crippled in their damage output, and I don't even know if a round of DoTs would kill a MOB. :(

Did low level DPS really change that much? Warlock DPS and mana efficiency was always almost equal to or even with hunters while leveling up. What happened? Is this just how it is now?

If you could also recommend what rotation I should be using in spells, including Life Taps/Drains, it would be helpful.

[Volki]

spec? gear? alot of factoers to contribute to all this, but my first question, if you want faster kills, why are you wanding?

[enmar884]

Honestly I didn't expect a reply that fast :O

I'm wanding because I need to be able to keep some of the little mana I'm already left with.

Here is my armory:

The World of Warcraft Armory

Ignore the fact that I have both Herbalism and Mining

[Akasha]

Warlock DPS and mana efficiency was always almost equal to or even with hunters while leveling up.

Hunter's have always been better 'grind' machines due to the fact that do damage without using any mana at all (auto-shot). Warlocks will always need to use mana, unless you want to melee them to death..

[Läsher]

Im new to posting here and just made it to 70 2 days ago. I also leveled as you are in Affliction. From what i see of your gear its really more for mages or a Destro build. When I was leveling (and until i reach 80) I have tryed to get Gear that was either pure Shadow Damage or now Spell Power. As affliction while leveling crit is of no use and stam even though it gives you more health for life taps did not seem to help me nearly as much as maxing out my damage. You should be able to (if you get the kind of gear i suggest) be able to use the rotation of Curse of Agony, Cor, SL, Life Tap, DS or DL to finish them off with high health and mana. Once you get high enough to get Haunt then you just plain stay full through every kill

Hope this helps
Lasher

[Amanita]

Siphon Life is not mana efficient - and doesn't do much damage until you have a lot of +Spell Power. Don't use it at all unless you know you won't get mana stress.

Affliction (for leveling) needs Dark Pact for mana. You should spec so you get it as soon as you have anough talent points to go that deep. You have plenty of spare points - you're over-allocated at the top of the tree.

Candidate talents to leave until later: Supression, Imp Drain Soul, Imp Life Tap (yes - I know it gives mana), Amp Curse, Soul Siphon. You come back later for the ones you want at 70 of course.

General rule: select the deep talents you want, then make sure you get them as fast as you can - which means max 5 points per level until 51 (if you choose to go that far). There are still a lot of useless or badly positioned talents in the Affliction tree. If you're not sure how to choose Talents, ask more questions.

Examples of questionable talents: Contaigon, Supression, Imp DS, Fel Concentration, the last 4 points in Shadow Embrace.

Imp fear, CoEx, iHoT have their charm for leveling.

[Redmage]

I used to do this....

Unstable affliction, corruption, curse of agony, siphon life (optional), fear, drain life...move to next mob while the other is running around feared. Repeat, repeat.

Affliction leveling is just a pleasure (in that you can clean out entire camps non stop).

[enmar884]

Thank you for the replies. They've helped a lot.

@ Lasher: I would like +damage gear, unfortunately there isn't exactly a surplus of it available at level 37, will look for some in the future

@ Amanita Thanks for the suggestions, but I have a dilemma. If I shouldn't be getting, or should be holding off on the talents you listed, what talents SHOULD I be getting? As you said there aren't a lot of good ones, and I can surely see that.

[XavronMG]

Up until level 58/60 - don't worry too much about +damage gear. Focus on +sta and +int gear instead (in that order).

(Mostly because there's simply not a lot of +damage gear at low levels.)

[Lephturn]

I'd try this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

From here I'd put 2 more in Shadow Mastery and then immediately get Dark Pact to solve your mana issues. I chose the points in the first tier the way I did for both the mana reduction and the 2 point 10% boost in one dot instead of a 5 point 10% boost in one dot.