WoW SoD: Best talent builds and Runes for Warlocks in WoW Classic Season of Discovery

No matter which version of World of Warcraft you might be playing, each class will always have the optimal meta-build. Season of Discovery is no different. Though the best rune engravings can change, most players will have the same talent-build for their classes, like Warlock.

Warlocks received a very significant change to their gameplay style in SoD. Not only are some of their spells more effective, but they can even turn into a huge purple demon and act as a tank during dungeon runs. Despite this, Warlocks will ultimately use one of the following talent builds when it comes to the endgame.

Best Warlock Demonology Tank Build in WoW Classic SoD

The only mandatory rune for this build is Metamorphosis, so you can turn into a powerful tanking demon. 

If you are familiar with the Warlock class, you’re likely to be interested in how Warlocks can tank in Season of Discovery. Or, better yet, you may just want to turn into a cool-looking demon. While a metamorphosed Warlock looks and plays amazingly, many of its talents become useless as soon as they turn demon. This is because when in Demon form, the Warlock can’t use a lot of their regular spells.

Because of this, the talent points should only boost what the Warlock can still do while in this form. Even so, I had a ton of fun playing a demon Warlock, and I imagine you will, too.

• Demonic Embrace (five points) – Since you will be tanking you will need lots of Stamina, so this is a must.
• Improved Voidwalker (three points) – Some of these spells still work in your demonic form, so you may as well take them.
• Corruption (five points) – Corruption spells are still effective, so you may as well reduce their cast time.
• Affliction (three points) – Spend your last three points to make it harder for enemies to resist your affliction spells.

Best Warlock Destruction DPS Build in WoW Classic SoD

If you want to play the classic damage dealer, you’ll have to ditch the demon form and focus on fire magic. That’s right, you won’t even need the Shadow Bolt spell for this build. All your talent points will be placed around fire magic and talents that improve your critical chance. This build is extremely powerful but very familiar to someone who has played a warlock in the past. For rune engravings, you should take Chaos Bolt, Incinerate, and Lake of Fire, as all of these improve your fire spells. Thanks to Icy-veins for this build.

• Cataclysm (five points) – First, reduce the cost of all your destruction spells by five percent.
• Bane (five points) – This reduces casting time of shadow and fire spells significantly. While we don’t care about shadow spells in this build, we do care about quickly casting those fire spells.
• Devastation (five points) – Get an extra five percent to all your destruction spells.
• Shadowburn (one point) – You’re mainly getting this spell to get Soul Shards, and because you don’t have any more points to invest into higher talents.

Best Warlock Affliction PvP Build in WoW Classic SoD

Snutz himself created the following PvP build. Since you can only reach level 25, you are limited to how much you can do on the PvP battlefield. Because of this, you should maximize your life-tap ability and ensure all your affliction spells are as effective as possible. I personally don’t do much PvP, but if the OTK Mak’gora winner says these work, I believe him. For runes, you should go with Master Channeler, Everlasting Affliction, and Haunt.

• Improved Corruption (five points) – First, put five points into Improved Corruption to reduce the casting time by two seconds. While it may not seem like much, this will be invaluable in the long-run.
• Improved Life Tap (two points) – This will help you recover mana even faster. In my opinion this is a must for all Affliction Warlocks.
• Improved Life Drain (two points) – Put only two points into here since we won’t be using it that often.
• Suppression (five points) – You don’t really need anything from the third tier on the talent tree, so put the next five points into Suppression. With this, enemies will have a harder time resisting your affliction spells.
• Amplify Curse (one point) – Make your curses more effective with this perk.
• Nightfall (one point) – Unfortunately, we can only get one point for this awesome proc. Shadow Trance is invaluable as it can make all your next Shadow Bolt an instant cast.