Warlock talents With Mists of Pandaria , warlocks can begin choosing their talents beginning at level fifteen . Players may choose a new talent from the same group of three talents at periodic levels ( 15 , 30 , 45 , etc . ) . Current Talents . < onlyinclude > < / onlyinclude > Pre - Mists of Pandaria . Starting at level 10 , a Warlock can begin spending talent points to gain new abilities and spells , strengthen existing abilities , and specialize how he / she functions . See the entry on Talents for more information about the Talent system . Warlock Talents have undergone significant changes with the 1 . 6 patch , and further changes with the 2 . 0 . 1 and 3 . 0 patches . Some Warlock talent builds have become quite popular . There ' s a tendency to describe talent builds with the names of their highest - tier talents , or by the numbers of points spent in each tree ( 30 / 0 / 21 means 30 points in Affliction , no points in Demonology , and 21 points in Destruction ) ; the trees are listed in alphabetical order , which is the order in which they appear in the game . Also , there are usually many options available on the way to the top - tier talents ; there can be many variations of these depending on each Warlock ' s individual taste and style . Do keep in mind that a leveling build is a very different thing from an end game 80 raiding or pvp build . The latter depend on the availability of all talent points as well as stacking stats like Spell Power and haste ( which you only do past level 60 ) to be really effective , so picking a level 80 build right at the beginning and adding points toward it as you level up is a bad idea ; you will get very few or none of the benefits of that build until you reach the high 70s . It is better while leveling to target a build for level 40 , level 60 , level 70 and level 80 and respec to them when you get to that level as these are the stages where key talents and spells are unlocked . With warlocks , you typically need one build to 40 ( something like the old SL - SL ) that focuses on survivability and uptime without depending on Spell Power , another to 80 that does and a third at 80 for endgame content ( raiding or pvp ) . Which talent tree to choose ? Warlocks can only take the role of damage dealers ( also known as dps ) , so it ' s not clear at first moment how each talent tree improves damage or how the warlock ' s play style changes when choosing talents from specific trees . Simple explanation . A simple explanation considers that , since the warlock is a damage dealer , then each talent tree must improve damage in a different way . The warlock has many ways of causing damage , like DoT s and curses ( ie , " marking " the target with spells that keeps " ticking " or weakening them ) , channeled spells ( ie , a spell that drains energy or mana ) , damage caused by minions and direct damage spells ( ie , spells that have a cast time , followed by a single instant or nearly instant damage burst ) . Considering this point of view , each talent tree improves damage on the following ways : Since the type of spells improved are different , the spells used by the players will vary according to the tree . Talents as task solvers . A second view of talent trees is considering that there are many different tasks that the warlock may want to do in the game and that certain tasks are better accomplished by certain talent trees . Consider the following tasks : leveling , doing quest s , farming , playing PvP and playing with a group in dungeon s and raid s . Each task may be done better by fullfilling certain essential requirements : How each talent tree is related to each task and which task is better fullfilled by each talent tree ? If we consider that we would only pick talents from a single tree , the following discussion would apply : How this translates to practical , real world talent builds ? If you need to go leveling or making quests , affliction is by far , the least downtime , most mana efficient talent tree , so get as much points as you can . If you need a lot of survival when playing pvp , specially against damage bursts , the demonology offers the most health improvements and damage mitigation , so get lots of points in demonology . If you play pvp , but doesn ' t require a lot of survival , spend some points in damage and some points in healing in affliction or destruction . If you need guaranteed damage in raids , choose destruction talents . Alternativelly , if you think you can cope with more complex DoT rotations ( thus dealing with more varied cases ) and still mantain great damage in raids , put points in affliction . As a useful hint , even though the best talents are deep in each tree , complementing some tree in higher levels with another that improves something that the original tree lacks is almost always done in popular builds . For example , the " Shadow embrace / ruin " is a 56 / 0 / 15 that spends 15 points on a single destruction spell to complement damage for this affliction spec . Similarly , the " PvP - Destro " 0 / 20 / 51 improves the high damage pvp spec with many survival tricks . What about playing with the " wrong " build ? The above discussion does not prove that certain builds are correct and others are wrong , they only relate each tree with certain tasks . So , a warlock would want to level up with destruction and cope with high downtime , simply because he finds boring casting DoTs . That wouldn ' t be a " wrong " build , that would be the right build for him .