Equipment

Warlocks have a few weapon options available to them. They cannot however just pick up anything and fight with it. They can use:

• Cloth Armor
• Daggers
• Staves (trained)
• Swords (trained)
• Wands

Note that to use staves and swords, you must pay a Weapons Trainer to train you. Check out the Weapons Guide for where to find the best Weapons Trainer for you!

Going with a sword or dagger allows the use of devices such as magic orbs in the other hand, which are great for boosting intellect and spirit. The other choice for a warlock is to go with the tried and true art of using a staff against enemies. Staves are perfect for being a decent close combat weapon and usually having good intellect and spirit bonuses when magically imbued.

Best Warlock Equipment

Stats

As a Warlock, Stamina and Intellect are the only two stats you should be looking for. As a caster, a Warlock should never need to use Strength or Agility so those two are removed from the board. Since the Warlock can regen mana through alternative ways, Spirit is nowhere near as helpful as a larger mana pool and more health.

So it comes down to a question, which is more important, Stamina or Intellect? Well, that depends. More mana is always good (and passive spell critical strike), but with as many ways as a Warlock has to get mana back it’s not that massively important. On the other hand, Stamina is VERY important since the more health you have the more hits you can take in one fight.

So, really, by some simple logic, Stamina wins out. However, the majority of cloth will generally ALWAYS favor Intellect over Stamina, so you’ll rarely have to choose between the two. Remember also that some of your stats transfer to your pet and as such, Stamina (more health) is very beneficial to every pet.

Effects

The only two things a Warlock really needs to focus on is either Spell Critical Strike or Spell Damage. Anything about melee is just forget about it. Anything with pure healing is also rather useless, it must have damage.

There is a good debate always on what is more important, critical strike chance or additional damage. It boils down to critical strikes provide one big burst of damage every now and then while additional damage always adds a little bit more damage. To me, it comes down to playstyle. Do you want to focus on relying on those big damage crits by getting your critical strike chance as high as possible or do you just want to get your normal damage as high as possible.

Some builds do much better with critical strike chance over spell damage. For instance, with Searing Pains quick recharge it will do really well with a high critical strike chance build. You’ve really just got to go for what you want the most.

Tiered Gear

Each class has a different set of gear that is specifically for them and has some of the best stats in the game. Here are the names of each set and where most of the parts are located. If you’re interested in the details of each set then have a look at our Ten Ton Hammer’s Database where you can search and find any item you’re looking for.

DS: Dungeon Set (Rare to Epic Quality)
Tier: Tiered Set (Epic Quality)

• DS1: Dreadmist Raiment
  Drops in various level sixty 5-man instances.
• DS2: Deathmist Raiment
  Part of a lengthy quest to upgrade the DS1 gear.
• Tier 1: Felheart Raiment
  Available from the Molten Core
• Tier 2: Nemesis Raiment
  Blackwing Lair and Onyxia
• Tier 3: Plaugeheart Raiment
  Naxxramas
• DS3: Oblivion Raiment
  Drops in various level seventy 5-man instances.
• Tier 4: Voidheart Raiment
  Bought in Shattrath City – Drops from Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, and Magtheridon’s Lair
• Tier 5: Corrupter Raiment
  Bought in Shattrath City – Drops from various raid instances in Outland, like the Eye