WoW newbie looking for advice

[TriggerHappy]

I've finally succumbed to temptation and am currently downloading the 10 day trial. Assuming nothing too horrible happens, I'm probably going to get the full game, which leads me to a few questions:

Should I get the original game first, or get the Burning Crusade expansion as well? Is there any content from the expansion that I will see right away with a new character?

I'm going to be playing an Undead Warlock because it seems the class most like the D2 Necromancer (curses and a pet), which I still remember with nostalgia. Any tips on the class? Any tips for a new character in general? I'm looking to mainly solo first to experience the game at a slow pace.

What exactly is the difference between PvE and PvP servers? I've been trying to do a bit of research on this but it's very confusing. Battlegrounds who?

How about servers? Which have good populations and least amounts of doushbaggery?

Should I know anything else now? Things that aren't obvious, to watch out for, etc?

Treat me like a WoW-dummy. Talk slowly, explain things as if to a child, I don't mind. Any advice is appreciated!

[Taelas]

There is content you won't be able to see if you do not get the expansion immediately -- namely the two starting areas for the Burning Crusade races, as well as the races themselves: Blood elves for Horde, Draenei for Alliance. This is not a major issue, though. Still, I would suggest getting both.

Warlocks are great soloers, so that's a good choice if you like the playstyle. I'm afraid pets are mostly unreliable as a warlock, though. You can also only have one at a time.

-The imp is the first and most basic minion a warlock gets. It casts fireballs and can go into phase-mode where it cannot be attacked (though in order to attack, it will have to stop phasing). It also provides a very valuable stamina buff.
-The voidwalker is the second minion which you get at level 10. It's the tank, the minion that's supposed to take all the hits -- but it's not good at it.
-The succubus is the third minion, acquired at level 20 (though an annoying questline, I must say). It's provides damage dealing and crowd control in the form of seduce. Unfortunately it has almost no health and no armor and it dies very easily.
-The felhunter is the fourth minion, acquired at level 30. It is your primary pet versus other spell casters, as it can interrupt their spells and dispel their buffs.
-The infernal and the doomguard are mostly the same: pure damage pets with no true special abilities. You also eventually lose control of them and have to cast Enslave Demons to keep them. I am not sure when you get them, but I believe you get the infernal at level 50 and the doomguard at level 60. I do not think anyone uses these pets anymore.
-The crown jewel of minions, the felguard: Only available through the top talent in the Demonology tree, the felguard is the single best pet you can get. It is available at level 50 if you put every talent point towards getting it. The felguard, while not possessing the stamina buff of imps or the crowd control of succubi, deals the most damage of all your pets and can actually serve as a tank, making it the most reliable pet you can have.

The demonology tree enhances your pets and their abilities, and is the strongest soloing tree. The affliction tree gives you damage-over-time spells (DoTs) and enhances abilities that work over time. The destruction tree is the "nuking" tree, the strongest damage tree that warlocks have. Affliction and destruction warlocks generally only use their pets for buffs. Find out which works best for you, but keep in mind that each tree has its own playstyle.

PvE and PvP servers are only different in one aspect: On a PvP server, in areas that are marked as "contested", everyone becomes flagged for PvP. On areas that are marked as the territory of a faction, the opposite faction becomes flagged.

Battlegrounds are like instances: Special zones that only holds up to a limited number of players at a time. These zones are purely for PvP-play, and all have different objectives that you must accomplish in order to "win" the battleground. There are currently four: Alterac Valley, 40v40, "AV"; Arathi Basin, 15v15, "AB"; Eye of the Storm, 15v15, "EotS"; Warsong Gulch, 10v10, "WSG".

I'm afraid as a European player, I can't tell you much of which servers to choose, but I believe there is a sizable population of Lurker Lounge players on Horde side of the Terenas-US server, which at least can be a consideration.

Something you should be aware of... Hm. Well, the end-game splits into two: PvP and PvE, with occasional overlap. PvP-end-game is all about arenas -- almost like small battlegrounds but with teams and special "arena points" which you can use to purchase gear. PvE-end-game is all about raiding -- raids are large-scale instances, 10-man and 25-man. These usually take a considerable amount of time to complete, and they are only reset on a timer specific to the instance (usually once every week; I believe it's Tuesday in the US). Both styles of end-game naturally have requirements on gear and skill, depending on how competitive you are.

[Lissa]

Some addendum for Triggerhappy

The Warlock is a very different animal than the Necromancer. The Necromancer ran with a horde of minions, the Warlock runs with one. Curses here are different as well, you will have debilitating (Curse of Weakness, Curse of Tongues), Damage boosting (Curse of the Elements, Curse of Shadows, Curse of Recklessness), and damage doing(Curse of Agony, Curse of Doom). Curse of Weakness is never used (it's just a stop gap until you get some of the other curses), Curse of Tongues is only used against casters (mostly in PvP, occasionally in PvE for specific fights), Curse of the Elements/Shadows/Recklessness is used to boost damage through Fire and Frost/Shadow and Arcane/Physical respectively, Curse of Agony is a 24 second DoT that ramps up damage every few ticks, and Curse of Doom is a straight shot of damage after one minute.

One thing to note about Curse of Recklessness, it also make the mob immune to fear which can be very helpful if the mob will run to get help from others, but switching to CoR as the mob is about to run, it will stay or will return if it has started to run. Warlocks that are quite proficient with it's use can literally control where a mob goes by using CoR, another Curse, and Fear.

I'm afraid pets are mostly unreliable as a warlock, though.

Not really, the problem is people don't learn how to use the pets effectively. Ideally, if you learn how the pet is used, it will end up giving you maximum effectiveness.

You can also only have one at a time.

-The imp is the first and most basic minion a warlock gets. It casts fireballs and can go into phase-mode where it cannot be attacked (though in order to attack, it will have to stop phasing). It also provides a very valuable stamina buff.

You'll use this guy until you get a Voidwalker or when you're grouping mostly. The imp itself is pretty fragile, he cannot tank, and will only be a minor speed bump for most mobs. If you need to run however, he can give you a little bit of a lead if you don't have too much aggro over him (he should be able to pull a mob back to himself, more if you're good with multitargetting).

-The voidwalker is the second minion which you get at level 10. It's the tank, the minion that's supposed to take all the hits -- but it's not good at it.

The problem people have with the Voidwalker (nicknamed Blueberry) tanking is when they get near to a new decade level (x0, his new taunt happens every 10 levels, so 20, 30, 40, etc) or when they don't recognize how to cast their DoTs to give the Blueberry enough of a lead. If you're going to go nuts with damage, the Blueberry isn't going to be effective, on the other hand, if you are patient, the Blueberry will hold the mob until it dies, usually running your DoTs like Curse of Agony, wait a second, Corruption, wait a second, Immolate, and Blueberry will hold the mob (unless you're getting close to x0, then you have to space the DoTs a little more).

-The succubus is the third minion, acquired at level 20 (though an annoying questline, I must say). It's provides damage dealing and crowd control in the form of seduce. Unfortunately it has almost no health and no armor and it dies very easily.

This is the DPS/CC pet. Mostly she is used to assist you with DPS and to CC an additional Humanoid mob if you have two. The Ho (as many call her) is usually used in concert with Drain tanking (get to that more in a moment). Typically if you are dealing with a mob or two, she'll be beating on the same mob that you are drain tanking.

-The felhunter is the fourth minion, acquired at level 30. It is your primary pet versus other spell casters, as it can interrupt their spells and dispel their buffs.

This pet is mostly used for PvP (nicknamed Puppy or Doggy). The damage the felhunter produces is not that high and in general PvE play you're better off using either a Blueberry or Ho. In PvP is where they shine however, being able to shut down opposition casters as well as helping with seeing stealthed Rogues and Druids (through Paranoia). In PvP, the good Warlocks are either using a Puppy or using a Felguard (if they are that deep in demonology).

-The infernal and the doomguard are mostly the same: pure damage pets with no true special abilities. You also eventually lose control of them and have to cast Enslave Demons to keep them. I am not sure when you get them, but I believe you get the infernal at level 50 and the doomguard at level 60. I do not think anyone uses these pets anymore.

These two pets are rarely used by most. The Infernal gets used more than the Doomguard because of it's PvP uses. The Doomguard, while being able to put out a large amount of damage, is not worth the trouble it takes to summon one (either using the summoning spell which kills one of your party members or by use of Curse of Doom and hoping CoD kills the mob and it triggers a Doomguard and you then have to enslave it). The quests for both come and 50 and 60 respectively for the summons (Curse of Doom also comes at 60), but you will likely not do the quests until you are a bit higher (the Infernal quest can be soloed when you achieve 53 with difficulty as the mob you must take down is 57, unless they changed that recently).

Now, Draintanking. What this is is the use of Drain Life with certain Talents to make it rarely end up being interrupted. You DoT up the target mob with Corruption, Immolate, and Curse of Agony and then use Drain Life and Life Tap to keep your health and mana up. If done correctly, you should have no downtime or very little at all.

Also, I would look at more than just the Undead for Warlock. Both the Orc and the Blood Elf have some useful racial abilities that can help out immensely, especially if you plan to do any PvP (Orc are more resistant to stun and Blood Elves can silence and drain off some mana). So before you definitely make the plung at going with Undead, take a look at the racials of the other two Horde Warlocks before making your decision (going Blood Elf will require you to get the expansion, but it's worth getting).

[RTM]

I've finally succumbed to temptation and am currently downloading the 10 day trial. Assuming nothing too horrible happens, I'm probably going to get the full game, which leads me to a few questions:

Should I get the original game first, or get the Burning Crusade expansion as well? Is there any content from the expansion that I will see right away with a new character?

I'm going to be playing an Undead Warlock because it seems the class most like the D2 Necromancer (curses and a pet), which I still remember with nostalgia. Any tips on the class? Any tips for a new character in general? I'm looking to mainly solo first to experience the game at a slow pace.

What exactly is the difference between PvE and PvP servers? I've been trying to do a bit of research on this but it's very confusing. Battlegrounds who?

How about servers? Which have good populations and least amounts of doushbaggery?

Should I know anything else now? Things that aren't obvious, to watch out for, etc?

Treat me like a WoW-dummy. Talk slowly, explain things as if to a child, I don't mind. Any advice is appreciated!

On PvP vs. PvE servers: on a PvP server, once you reach certain game locations ("zones", usually around level 20ish and up), you will be automatically flagged for PvP. This means that any member of the opposing faction can come up and attempt to kill you (and vice versa). A few terms related to this are ganking and corpse-camping. Ganking refers to a high-level character of the opposite faction killing you. Corpse-camping happens when the opposite faction stands around your corpse waiting for you to resurrect ("rez") so they can kill you again.

On a PvE server you do not get automatically flagged- you have to do it manually. Or attack certain PvP-flagged targets. Both of the main Lurker guilds are on PvE servers, so you can see where our preference lies.:) Some prefer the excitement of a PvP server though. Personal preference, really.

Battlegrounds are special PvP zones where specific objectives must be completed to win. You're flagged for PvP automatically. You win tokens and honor (kind of like an alternate currency that you gain by killing the opposite faction) which you can then spend on various items. You join a battleground with the intent of doing PvP. It is completely optional and can be both very fun and very frustrating. Battlegrounds is a great place to learn how to play your character and react to different critical situations quickly.

I wouldn't be a Lurker if I didn't recommend one of our guilds. You're playing horde, so check out the Lurkers guild on Terenas. We're a great group of folks if I do say so myself.:)If you ever decide to roll a dirty Alliance, there's a guild on Stormrage. As I said above, both are PvE.

You picked a great time to start levelling a character- the latest patch made levelling easier by reducing the amount of XP needed between levels (for levels 20-60) and increasing the amount of XP rewarded from quests. Also a lot of tough monsters ("elites") were reduced to non-elite status, which makes doing a lot of quests that previously required a group much easier to solo.

In addition to what the above posters said re: warlocks, they're a lot of fun to play. The playstyle can be as simple or complex as you want. One of your main tools will be a spell called Fear, which sends a monster running away for a period of time. A lot of your damage spells work over a long period of time, so one strategy you can use as a warlock is to cast all of your DoT's (Damage over Time, refers to your spells that do damage over a long time as opposed to a lot of damage all at once), fear the mob, then wait for it to die. You can solo pretty much any type of enemy (assuming it is fearable) this way, whereas for some tougher enemies other classes would require a second class or some heals. You can take this a step further once you are higher level, and DoT up multiple mobs, then cast Howl of Terror which is a fear that affects multiple enemies. Fun!

To expand on what Lissa siad about drain tanking: mana is VERY rarely an issue for warlocks due to the spell Life Tap and a few of the self-healing spells you get. Life Tap converts health to mana, which on the surface looks bad, but you can gain health back via Drain Life, which is a spell that damages an enemy and converts that damage to health for you. So adding Fear into the mix, you can cast your DoT's, Fear the enemy, Life Tap to get mana back, and cast Drain Life on the feared enemy to get your health back. Voila! Dead enemy, full health & mana!

Once you reach level 10, you start to accumulate talent points. These are kind of like the skill trees in Diablo 2 in that points spent in these trees will improve your existing spells, give you new spells, add various affects to your spells, or improve your stats in some manner. I'm a big fan of Wowhead's talent calculator- it's a bit quicker than the one on the official site (and actually gets updated a bit quicker also, it seems). Check out the talent trees for your class and see which one suits your fancy. Many warlocks will tell you that the Affliction tree is best for levelling, and I would agree. Unlike Diablo 2, you can re-do your talents whenever you want for a fee. The fee starts at 1 gold and goes up the more you re-do them. It caps out at 50g. If you go a long time without respeccing, the fee gradually goes down.

Whoa, wall of text! Hope that helps.:)

[ima_nerd]

Grab trade skills early! Read about them on the WoW site to get a feel for what they are and pick two you want asap. If you don't, you'll be backtracking through newbie zones to level up your skills instead of them progressing at the same rate as your character level.

If anyone asks if you want to do an instance - do it if you have the time. I've had some horrible experiences in groups of random people but it can be the most fun you'll have playing the game. Don't let your soloing mindset make you forget WoW is a very socially oriented game.

Grr, you've got me wanting to play WoW again...:angry:

[TriggerHappy]

Wow (no pun intended), so much information!

Drain tanking sounds quite fun. And the fear, pet, DoT curses interaction sounds somewhat like playing a curse/golem Necromancer in D2. Methinks I'll enjoy that playstyle.

I'm going for Undead after having read the basics on the races and classes (also how I ended up being interested in the Warlock). They have this cannibalize ability, which to a newbie like me seems extremely useful. Am I wrong in this assumption? They also have the anti-fear/sleep skill that's supposed to work even even after you have those effects on you. That seemed like another extremely useful ability (I assume there are monsters that will do that to you).

I'm going Horde 'cause I have an aversion to goody-two-shoes characters and sides. And what's the exact opposite of that if not the people who want to destroy all life (and even other un-life!) with a plague? :)

I'm a bit confused on the pets. You guys have given me pretty much opposing viewpoints. If as Alliera says they aren't there to tank or add significant damage, what is their purpose? Just crowd control? On the other hand Lissa says they can be useful for all of the above! I'm very much confused here, and need to get un-confused fast, since I assume I can't splash across all three skill trees and need to make my choice at character start.

Battlegrounds sound very interesting. PvP servers sound like they would be rife with frustration, especially for a new player like myself. So I'll stick with PvE for now. I can always do a paid character transfer anyway, if I understand it correctly. I'll probably look up the rest of the Lurkers when I get interested in doing instances (I assume they're like Guild Wars missions, segregated from the rest of the world).

As for professions, I was gonna go with Tailoring (since I read that Warlocks can only wear cloth armor). What would be your suggestions for other useful ones to take? How useful is First Aid, for example?

Well, thank you muchly for the mountains of information to digest. It's greatly appreciated!

[Taelas]

Oh? I didn't think what we said were that different.

Pets are there to deal damage, tank and crowd control. I just have less faith in the voidwalker's tanking capability than Lissa does, mostly because I think it goes too slow.:)

Do note that while the option to transfer your character is there, you cannot do a PvE -> PvP transfer. Blizzard refuses to allow them.

As for trade skills, First Aid, Cooking and Fishing are called secondary professions, and you can have all three at once. The primary professions are the rest, and you can only have two of those.

[TriggerHappy]

Well that's disappointing with regards to PvE -> PvP transfer. Oh well.

So Alliera, would you recommend investing into the Demonology tree, or would I be better off with curses and direct damage spells/talents? I've seen references to re-specs, how easy/difficult are those to do?

How would I ensure I'm keeping up with the trade skills? If I want to be a tailor, do I just keep using it from the moment I get it (from my class trainer, I assume)? Or is their progression tied to leveling up?

[RTM]

Cannibalize is a great racial bonus and can reduce a lot of downtime. Will of the Forsaken (the fear break one) is an incredibly good skill especially in PvP, where fear is used a lot. There aren't a lot of monsters in the game that have fear so it gets limited use in PvE content.

Pets are an integral part of the warlock experience, but if you are looking to have a minion who does the majority of your killing work for you then you might want to take a look at a hunter. Warlock pets complement a lot of the various warlock skills but none of them are really out there to do the grunt work, so to speak, except for perhaps the Felguard who is only obtainable by putting 41 points into the Demonology tree (i.e. level 50 at the earliest).

Here's the general role of the pets:
Imp: great buffs via Blood Pact, great mana regen, ok DPS (damage per second), VERY squishy
Voidwalker: good tank, poor DPS
Succubus: good DPS & crowd control ("CC"), can't take many hits
Felhunter: ok DPS, excellent against caster mobs
Felguard: great DPS, good tank

Try out all the pets for a few levels and find which one you like using the best. Different warlocks have different preferences. Don't write off a pet before getting all their skills, either! Many warlocks ditch the Succubus as soon as they get her at level 20, but she's pretty much worthless at that level- she doesn't get all of her skills until level 26 or so. Same for the Felhunter & Felguard. Skills for pets are obtained through grimoires sold by a demon trainer who usually sits next to any given warlock trainer.

Tailoring is a very good profession for a warlock- the level 70 tailoring recipes are VERY good, considering the ease of making them. There is no associated gathering profession with tailoring, so you can take whatever you want. If you grab herbalism or mining you can sell the proceeds on the auction house to finance gear upgrades. Enchanting is also good, but it tends to be expensive to level.

You can only pick 2 main professions, but you can get all 3 secondary professions (cooking, first aid, fishing) at the same time. They're all worth getting (some would argue that point about fishing:P), so be sure to pick them up as early as possible!

A note on character transfers: you can only transfer PvP to PvP, PvP to PvE, or PvE to PvE. No PvE to PvP server transfers. They implemented these back when the old honor system was in place and frankly I don't know why that requirement is still around but it is.

Don't wait till you need an instance run to join a guild. Being part of a guild increased my enjoyment of the game by about 100%. Even if you don't talk in guild chat, just getting to know folks in the guild really makes the game fun, not to mention that help is only a question away.:)

EDIT: bah, Alleria beat me to some stuff

[Bun-Bun]

I've played a lock as a drain-tanking Affliction and a Demonology spec and they're both fun.

On Pets:

The Voidwalker will tank acceptably if you're a bit careful not to do too much damage. The Felguard pet tanks just dandy and does a good chunk of damage as well. If you're drain-tanking, you're the one taking the damage anyway, so you'd probably not use the low-damage Voidwalker, but you'll want to have the Affliction talents to reduce spell interruption before going that course.

The pets can do significant damage, but many playstyles are geared to maximize the warlock's damage, not the pet's. A lot depends on how you're spending your time; a raiding warlock often uses a Demonology talent to sacrifice the pet to augment his capabilities, and an Affliction warlock can use his Imp as a mana battery with the Dark Pact talent. Great for raiding or group play, not so hot for soloing.

You'll want to specialize in a tree eventually, but you can re-do your talent points at any time for a fairly nominal cost so don't worry too much. Lots of folks go heavy into one tree for leveling to 70 and change radically once they start PvPing or raiding.

As for professions, I was gonna go with Tailoring (since I read that Warlocks can only wear cloth armor). What would be your suggestions for other useful ones to take? How useful is First Aid, for example?[/quote]

You can get two primary professions, and all the secondary professions. First Aid, Cooking, and Fishing are all secondary professions, so you can go wild with them. I strongly agree that you should keep First Aid and Cooking up to speed as you go along; I'm not into Fishing so much.:)

I'd recommend Tailoring for the nifty high-end recipes that produce gear that only Tailors can wear. The second one is up for grabs; I'd suggest Herbalism or Mining to generate stuff you can sell on the Auction House for cash. Some go with Enchanting for the second profession; it's quite powerful, but also quite expensive, so maybe not for you first time through. Engineering is also very nice for producing fun items, but is probably best paired with Mining so you don't have to buy all the raw materials.

You can always drop a profession and pick up a new one, so nothing's carved in stone. It does cost some time to grind a new profession back up to a useful level, so it's not something to do constantly, but it does happen.

[Sheep]

There are primary professions and secondary professions. The three secondary professions are Cooking, First Aid and Fishing: you can learn all three, as well as two primary professions.

One of my main concerns whenever I start out a new character is bag space. You start out with a large bag that can hold 16 items or stacks of the same item. However, this is insufficient for roaming far away from town and killing multiple varieties of enemies (Who all drop different types of items). To be able to go on extended forays without returning to town to empty your bags, by selling items to vendors, you need more bags. These can be found randomly, bought from certain vendors (expensive, not recommended) or created with Tailoring.

Primary professions can be subdivided into two kinds: gathering and production. The three gathering professions are skinning, mining, and herbalism. All of the items collected with these professions (with the notable exceptions of Ruined Leather Scraps) can be sold for ridiculous sums to other players at the auction house. Generally speaking, the older the server, the higher the prices on the auction house are.

I now adopt two gathering professions when I start a new character for a rapid influx of gold, which I can use to buy bags and skills. However, when I first started playing, I would always pick a production profession with its associated gathering profession. It's just so cool to be able to make your own stuff.

Tailoring is different from other production professions in that it does not require, for the most part, any leather, herbs, or minerals. This means that you can combine it with whatever you want, although blacksmithing and leatherworking aren't recommended for a Warlock. For that matter, alchemy without herbalism isn't very useful, as you need herbs to create potions.

I suggest taking a gander at what each profession can make on a site like Thottbot or WoWwiki, to see what looks most interesting to you.

[Taelas]

So Alliera, would you recommend investing into the Demonology tree, or would I be better off with curses and direct damage spells/talents? I've seen references to re-specs, how easy/difficult are those to do?

I personally am a fan of drain-tanking as an Affliction warlock, but Demonology is very strong for soloing. It's up to you. Respecs are easy -- all it requires is gold. Unfortunately it can become expensive (1 gold for the first, then 5, then it increases by 5g up to 50).

How would I ensure I'm keeping up with the trade skills? If I want to be a tailor, do I just keep using it from the moment I get it (from my class trainer, I assume)? Or is their progression tied to leveling up?

Once you hit level 5, you can get your professions. There are several profession levels:
-Apprentice; requires level 5, allows you to train to skill level 75
-Journeyman, requires level 10 and skill level 50; allows you to train to 150
-Expert, level 20 and skill level 125, allows you to train to 225
-Artisan, level 35 and skill level 200 (secondary professions require 225), allows you to train to 300
-Master, level 50 and skill level 275, allows you to train to 375

[Klaus]

I now adopt two gathering professions when I start a new character for a rapid influx of gold, which I can use to buy bags and skills. However, when I first started playing, I would always pick a production profession with its associated gathering profession. It's just so cool to be able to make your own stuff.

I usually recommend the two-gathering-professions route for new players, because it takes a while to get bootstrapped on cash to use for various stuff. This isn't as important for the warlock, because your lvl 40 mount is effectively free, instead of the 90g that others have to lay out.

If you decide to join us on Terenas, there are numerous tailors available that can make you bags and armor as you level. There are very few patterns that you must make for yourself until you reach level 70. Leveling tailoring is somewhat easier to do as you go along, but doing it all at once when you cap isn't horrible, either. As far as bags go, I personally have way too many 14-slot bags floating about that I don't know what to do with. Gifting them to a new player would be fun.

[Lissa]

Some things to note about Talent builds:

Affliction/Demonology or Demonology/Affliction are the primary leveling builds. The combination of these two talent trees gives you powerful DoTs to go with a Powerful pet thus allowing you to kill more mobs more quickly. Someone that is heavily invested in Affliction can do some serious grinding at higher levels. They perform what is known at "Yo-yo pulling" by DoTing up several mobs with Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life (a talent 21 points deep into Affliction available at level 30), Unstable Affliction (41 point Affliction talent) and Improved Howl of Terror (35 talent points deep into Affliction) and using Howl of Terror to fear the mobs off you and they then in turn go out and get more mobs and the cycle repeats until the area is cleared of mobs (and you're usually looting while mobs are coming to you). Someone who invests the oppostie direction in Demology will go more slowly, but will use their pets to maximum effectiveness.

Destruction/Demonology (1/21/39 or 0/21/40), Demonology/Destruction (y/41+x,20-x-y), Affliction/Destruction (41+x/y/20-x-y) are the primary raiding builds. The Destruction/Demonology build is the best scaling damage build for Warlocks in which the Warlock uses Demonic Sacrifice to gain a damage buff from their Succubus or Imp (usually Succubus as the new fire spells don't scale as well as shadow does). Demonology/Destruction tends to get the scaling talents from Destruction while using Felguard allowing the Warlock to also output some high amounts of damage, but it doesn't scale as well as Destruction/Demonology since if the Felguard dies (which is likely if you don't pay a lot of attention to them) you will lose a good chunk of your damage. Affliction/Destruction is the tank helper/DPS build since they will be running the Imp, the problem with this build is you really only want one per 25 man raid as too many Affliction Warlocks will eat the debuff slots on the target quickly (there are 40 debuff slots per mob, but a single Affliction Warlock can take 7 by themselves and only 2 of those 7 will be shared with other Warlocks) and their DPS also does not scale as well as you deeper into raiding.

Heavy Affliction, Heavy Demonology, and a cross of Demonology/Affliction are the primary PvP builds with Heavy Affliction being more prevalent in 2v2 Arenas with Heavy Demonology and Demonology/Affliction (called the SL/SL build for taking Soul Link and Siphon Life) are more noticeable in 3v3, 5v5, and BG due to the survival that these two builds represent.

[Drasca]

Notes on Racials.

Cannibalize: Not necessary at all. Waste of time imo. There are so many ways to heal, cannibalize shouldn't be necessary.

Orcs: In addition to stun resistence (which will save you from a lot of pvp trouble), they have the command ability, which adds +5% to pet damage. Not important seemingly, unless you go demonology or value your pets.

Fear is really too nerfed to matter much. If you go PvP, WotF helps a bit, but it doesn't affect 99.9% of PvE.

Imp: Best used when not in the same place, and using +imp talents. Since he has a ranged attack, if you are positioned differently from your Imp, you can have him lead aggro, and then attack and have that mob take additional distance to chase you. Their burst damage exceeds everything other pet too, when buffed. +1 pt Imp Firebolt, +3 pts Improved Imp = Mobile Chaingun spewing Firebolts.

Warlocks are sickenly fun. The stunts I pulled... summoning horde into alliance capital cities, Dropping a dozen Infernals with a dozen of my warlock buddies, swimming underwater everywhere, dropping off cliffs with blueberry, solo'ing elites few others would dare... Well worth the time.

[Bob the Beholder]

Notes on Racials.
Cannibalize: Not necessary at all. Waste of time imo. There are so many ways to heal, cannibalize shouldn't be necessary.

Not necessary, sure. But it's free, and doesn't take a bag space. Which does help at times.

[NiteFox]

I now adopt two gathering professions when I start a new character for a rapid influx of gold, which I can use to buy bags and skills. However, when I first started playing, I would always pick a production profession with its associated gathering profession. It's just so cool to be able to make your own stuff.

In going with Sheep's comment here, if you're interested in working towards maintaining several alts you can maintain a fairly decent support network among your characters with regards to tradeskills. For instance, my main is a Hunter, and took Skinning and Leatherworking right from the off, and hasn't changed at all. Now, while he is struggling to scrape together enough high-level leather to make stuff that he can use, he still has a plethora of lower-level Leatherworking patterns which don't earn him any skillups...

...but are useful for my second character, a Druid with Herbalism and Alchemy. A few minutes one-shotting lower-level monsters for the relevant leather, and I've got enough materials for a pair of Hillman's Shoulders fit for a moodruid. While she is too low a level to cook up any decent potions in return for my main, she can brew up a stack of pots to help any new characters I create, and it's not like she's actually going to use all those Rage Potions as a Balance Druid herself, but my Warrior will.

Remember that you can mail stuff between your characters with abandon. I haven't actually played my main account since the new mailing options introduced with 2.3, but it really wasn't that much of an issue to send individual letters with a piece of leather armour, and any herbs or alchemy fish, to my Druid from my main.

Now, I'm not going to lie to you, getting your first character up to 70 will be a lot harder than working on alts, but once you've made it, your other characters will have a lot easier time of it. Not only are you smarter with how the game works, but you do have the single-entity support network that is your main. If you're savvy, your main will save up any bags they've grown out of, and with access to Outland they'll be able to snap up huge Bind on Equip tradeskill bags (Which are large packs, but can only hold items relevant to a particular tradeskill - For instance, a Leatherworking bag can hold leathers, hides, and a skinning knife, while a Mining bag will hold ores, refined ingots, stones, and a pick). Pick up one of those, and it makes the early levelling of tradeskills a lot easier to deal with.

One other tip I can give you is to dedicate one character on your chosen server to be a mule character. I don't know how Guild Banks have affected the potency of a single-player mule (As opposed to the guildwide shared mules that the banks are supposed to replace.) but a mule for your own use helps immensely on three accounts:

1) The first is that it acts as an overflow for items that might come in useful later, either for your main character or anything else that follows. When I mentioned above that your main should keep all their bags, I didn't mean actually keep them on themselves in their bank - Ship all your old bags and non-soulbound seconds to your mule, and when another character grows into them, ship them over.
2) Easy auction house access: Found a neat little BoE green (Or blue if you're in Outland) that can make a tidy packet on the auction house, but you're in the middle of nowhere? Rather than spend all that time getting off track, heading back to a capital city when you could be out in the Badlands collecting ten buzzard asses for the next quest, head to the mailbox, ship it over to your mule, and carry on questing. Next chance you get, hop on to your mule, get all the items that your other characters found while doing real work, and put them all up for sale in the AH. It's no problem whatsoever to get a mule from any starting point to the nearest capital city.
3) Avoiding temptation: If you're saving up for something expensive, ship any excess gold to your mule for safekeeping, only keeping enough for yourself to keep up with repair bills and any crucial reagents your class may need. The thing about having a small stack of gold on yourself at any time means you might be tempted to hit up the auction house and blowing it all on junk. We've all been there, I'm sure. By putting the cash into the safety of another character, you're less likely to spend it on other stuff.

[TriggerHappy]

That's a lot of information to digest ... thank you all very much.

I've made my character so here we go.:)

Oh, one last question. Are there any decent forums for WoW other than this one? I've been repeatedly warned to stay away from the official ones, and a cursory glance showed me why ...

Thanks again everyone.

[Delc]

That's a lot of information to digest ... thank you all very much.

I've made my character so here we go.:)

Oh, one last question. Are there any decent forums for WoW other than this one? I've been repeatedly warned to stay away from the official ones, and a cursory glance showed me why ...

Thanks again everyone.

http://elitistjerks.com/ is pretty much the best. and yea the official forums are a cesspool.

my 2c since I came late to the thread.

Warlock pets each have their utility, but in general are pretty bad. Imp for the stam buff, and he can be phased shifted and used as a mana battery with dark pact. Succubus for crowd control. Fel hunter for anti-caster. Felguard for dps. VW for laughing at (its terrible after you get either your succubus or dark pact). Infernal and doomguard are junk. Infernal would be ok if it wasn't for the 1 hour cooldown, and the constant re-enslaving.

Professions: Double gathering is the only way to go while leveling, especially a first toon. None of the crafting ones offer anything that will offset the money you can make gathering, except at 70. Switching to tailoring at 70 can be very beneficial for a warlock. The gear you can make for yourself is awesome.

Server: Make sure you go with a mid to high population server. Having other people around makes the game much better. Also I would recommend a PvP server.

[Mavfin]

http://elitistjerks.com/ is pretty much the best. and yea the official forums are a cesspool.

Server: Make sure you go with a mid to high population server. Having other people around makes the game much better. Also I would recommend a PvP server.

Elitist Jerks is a really good place for info, but always keep in mind that it's geared toward end-game raiding, so sweeping pronouncements are made daily, such as "X build is the only build worth having for Y class talents", and such stuff as that. Level your toon and have fun trying stuff out before worrying too much about some of the drivel that the raiding-obsessed put out there. :wub:(Yes, I raided my time, too, so I know where they're coming from, but, WoW has evolved to where raiding and playing 16 hours a day aren't the only way to advance anymore)

Oh, and yes, a populated server is good. I don't care for PvP servers myself. Too much immaturity in the ganking of lowbies and all that. I much prefer the PvE (Normal) servers where i can quest in peace. YMMV.