Optional Lifetap

No other class in the game can replenish mana as easily and often as Warlocks can. Anytime you have health replenishing ability in your rotation such as drain life or siphon life, be sure to include your lifetap ability just before you replace health. Part of being able to solo is also keeping yourself active with as much uptime as possible. By replacing mana used immediately, then instantaneously replacing the life used by lifetap, you will never need to break for drinking and/or eating. This accomplishes much more than it seems. It will also put a DPS break into your rotation allowing your pet to regain or build on aggro making the mob less likely to attack you.

Special Pulls
Runners

Have you ever pulled a mob only to have it run into a pack before it dies? Suddenly it's like you are poking at a bee hive. Mobs start running everywhere and you have no time to plan. You have to pull every trick in the book just to survive. I have. There are better ways than to sacrifice your voidwalker and run like hell. The bubble and run rotation works to keep you alive but doesn't help you kill mobs. It can be kind of painful on the ego also. Next time, substitute the Curse of Agony with a Curse of Recklessness. Curse of Recklessness will modify your opponents attack power and armor but more importantly will cause your opponent to not flee. Just be sure to have the curse active before they attempt to flee.

Casters

Time for your felhunter to shine! I know, it doesn't happen often, but when it does, there is no better way to combat a caster than to sic your felhunter on it. Most casters have either big heavy hits or a nasty de-buff. No problems with our little fel puppy friend. The buff we get from it is nice, but its ability to silence casters and remove de-buffs is unparalleled. Take the time to change minions. Use the same rotations but substitute your Curse of Agony with curse of tongues. Another nice trick is to throw in a drain mana and your only worry will be some puny squishy trying to give you the beat down with a stick. The health you lose will be minimal and can be quickly replaced with a Siphon Life or Life Drain. This works well with healers as well. If they are lucky enough to avoid the silence, you are hitting them with an increased cast time on their heal spell, which will only be in vain.

Demons & Elementals

We Warlocks have more flexibility when engaging demons and elementals starting at level twenty eight. Banish is one of the best crowd control methods as we solo because there is no chance of breaking early and cannot be broken with a damaging spell. This will give you a lot of flexibility when dealing with these mobs. I tend to use it with multiple creature pulls only but this can be a lifesaver when used correctly. This is also a great time to begin to learn how to use macros and some advanced commands in the game. It's just you and your minion out there, use every advantage you can. As you face that group of demons, target one of them and type /focus in your chat window. You will notice the creature now shows up as a static target allowing you to monitor your “focus” while targeting and fighting other mobs. If you combine that trick with a small macro like /cast banish [target=focus] you will be able to not only monitor that extra mob but will be able to banish it without actually clicking on it. If the banish expires, all you have to do is hit that macro button again to re-banish it! No targeting it, no fumbling around, nice easy control. More on that later.

PvP

There is a big difference between rotations and abilities you will use for PvP versus PvE. Many of our crowd control techniques early on are not useable against other players. We simply cannot banish other players. We also cannot force them to focus on our minions. They will knowingly avoid them. Your best bet is fear. Fear first and fear often. This will incapacitate them immediately and allow you to get your dots up. If you're lucky, it will also send them into some mobs. After you “lol” keep a few things in mind. Fear can be broken with damage. Avoid casting a shadowbolt directly after getting the fear off. This may break the fear and waste a valuable opportunity. Use your first fear to get DOTs loaded. Also remember fear has diminishing returns so make the best of it. For your curse, stick with a damaging curse for melee and possibly a curse of tongues against casters. If you see your opponent cleanse the curse, strike back with another fear. The trick is to not get caught off guard here. Using the voidwalker is going to be the least effective minion for pvp battle. Have an imp, succubus or felhound ready and let them attack first if possible. The only time the void is going to help, is if your sacrifice it. If you are stuck with this minion out, save it for when they are out of fear and threaten to get some offence against you.

I could go on forever about each spell in our arsenal. The rotation will change as you reach different stages and acquire different talents. The concept stays the same. The above rotations utilize your pet first, regardless of type, then optimizes your de-buffs whether damaging or utility and finally allows for uptime by replenishing your man/health. Grinding your quests can be tedious and time consuming. Make the most out of every pull and come out alive.

Warlock Quests

We have more class specific quests then most any other class. Almost every minion requires a quest be completed to be able to summon your minions. Check in often with the warlocks trainers and be sure to complete the quests. The starting quest will be different based on your race and/or location but you will receive them at the appropriate level.

Level	Minion	Starting Quest (Race/Location Variant)
10	Voidwalker	Halgar's Summons Gakin's Summons Gan'rul's Summons Return to Talionia
20	Succubus	Devourer of Souls Gakin's Summons Carendin Summons
30	Felhunter	The Binding