Leveling Guide: 1-10

The first 10 levels of any new toon should be trivial. You only have a handful of beginning skills, there are no talents yet, and the mobs are super easy. Really there is very little difference between each class at these early levels besides being caster or melee. However, we do have to start somewhere and lvl 1 is as good a place as any. Besides, the better you understand your class early on, the more you will know later and the better off you will be. You will learn to like the class and be more likely to stick with it.

Choosing Your Race
Likely you have other friends or toons that are already Alliance or Horde and will want to join that side. If you are new or don't care either way, then that will be your first choice. It's largely a personal preference as to which side you want to go to, but for what it's worth, I prefer Horde.

Warlocks can be Gnome or Human on Alliance or Orc, Undead, or Blood Elf on Horde. There are slight pros/cons to each race that make them better/worse suited to the Warlock that may sway your decision.

• Gnome - Have larger mana pool from Expansive Mind
  
• Human - Higher spirit, which isn't very useful for Locks
• Orc - Increase in spell damage through Blood Fury
• Undead - Regenerates HP faster with Cannibalize, which is particularly useful after a Life Tap
• Blood Elf - Extra mana regen from Mana Tap/Arcane Torrent

I am a firm believer that class racials provide such minor benefits overall that it should be irrelevant in your race choice. That extra mana you gain from your racial won't mean too much when you are lvl 70. So you should pick the race you like most. For me it was Undead.

If you want every little extra advantage you can get though, Gnome is definitely the better choice for Alliance. It's less clear on Horde, but Orc is probably the best choice due to Blood Fury. It's like an extra damage trinket. Depending on tradeskills, you may prefer a class that provides a buff to that particular tradeskill though.

Playing
You should make sure to keep Demon Skin buff at all times. At first you're best tactic is just to spam shadowbolt. When you get your Imp, have it spam Firebolt along with you. Mobs will go down very fast. You may or may not want to use Immolate. It's a nuke with a DoT. But mobs should be going down so fast that you may just rather keep doing SBolt. At lvl 4 you will get corruption, which is a useful DoT that you should open with before SBolt.

At lvl 4 you get your first curse, Curse of Weakness(CoW). At 8 you get Curse of Agony(CoA). CoW is nearly worthless. CoA is an instant DoT that does more damage at the end of its timer. CoA should always be used over CoW. However if a mob goes down very quickly, it might not be worth casting the curse at all, since it does less damage the quicker the mob goes down.

You will also get Life Tap at lvl 6. You should get used to LT as you will be using it a lot. Lifetapping converts some of your health into valuable mana. You will find that you will be using up mana a lot faster than health, therefore by Life Tapping occasionally, you even out your HP and MP, which allows you to keep casting longer before needing to stop and eat/drink. This will become even more powerful later on when you get Drain Life

At 8 you will get Fear. With Fear you can keep mobs at a distance, which will allow you to nuke without getting your face beat in. Mobs move unpredictably when Feared, so you do not want to use it haphazardly. Learn to drag a mob away from other mobs before Fearing.

By this time you will be out of the newbie starting area and taking on slightly more difficult mobs and quests. The basic tactic is to open with Corruption, start moving away from the mob, toss CoA on mob while still moving back. Fear and start nuking with SBolt, reapply Corruption/CoA as needed. Mobs at this level should die before you need to reapply your DoTs.

As I said before, everything is simple right now, but you should get used to your 3 DoTs (Immolate, Corruption, and CoA) and learn when to use them. Immolate you don't need to use as much unless it's a tougher mob that will be up for a longer time. CoA's damage is backloaded, so you want to make sure you do not recast it till it is complete. Corruption is your main DoT and should be up 100% of the time.

That's it for now. Next time we will start more meatier stuff like placing talent points.