Within this guide, I will present 3 optimal Warlock leveling builds tailored for WoW Season of Discovery Phase 2.

Note that these builds have specific level requirements. If you intend to adopt any of these builds, ensure you have sufficient WoW SoD Gold to expedite your upgrades!

1. Dot And Rot Affliction

Let's begin with the Dot and Rot Affliction build, which is perfect for open-world questing, especially on a PvP server.

Functioning akin to the SL/SL Warlock in The Burning Crusade, this build offers high sustainability with Drain Life, Haunt, and unlocking Siphon Life at level 30. You'll become an unstoppable force with minimal downtime between encounters, likely emerging victorious in most 1v1 situations. 

Not only will you avoid the need to stop for eating and drinking, but you'll also save precious bag space by eliminating the necessity for food and water.

For talents, we'll opt for a standard Affliction spec with a focus on Drain Life. Our selected runes will include Master Channeler, Haunt, and Everlasting Affliction.

While there may be arguments for incorporating some Demonology points for increased survivability and demon utility, it's advisable to plan a respec upon reaching Level 35, as Shadow Mastery is essential for maximizing the effectiveness of our damage over time abilities.

2. Fire Cleave

Shifting focus from open-world questing to dungeon grinding, let's delve into our second build: the Fire Cleave.

Depending on your server's population, open-world questing might prove to be a challenging ordeal, regardless of faction. If maximizing efficiency ranks as your top priority, dungeon farming is likely to offer the fastest route, particularly if you're starting late.

For this strategy to work optimally, you'll ideally want a combination of a Prot Paladin and a Living Flame Mage in your group composition. The primary runes for this build are Lake of Fire and Incinerate, and we'll be employing our standard fire raid spec, enhancing our imp and providing more utility for our destruction spells.

Once your group engages a large pack of mobs, the rotation is straightforward: begin by casting Incinerate for the 25% damage buff, followed by casting Rain of Fire, and then repeat. It's crucial to maintain 100% uptime on your Incinerate buff to ensure maximum damage output from Rain of Fire.

Something to bear in mind: we acquire Hellfire at level 30 and Rank 2 Rain of Fire at level 34, which will significantly enhance our capabilities. Upon reaching Level 30 and learning Hellfire, and once you trust in your group's tank and healer, utilizing Hellfire as your primary AOE damage spell will decimate anything in your path. This operates similarly to our pre-Hellfire rotation, where we cast Incinerate for the 25% damage buff, then Rain of Fire for the Lake of Fire effect, and finally spam Hellfire. With Hellfire being buffed for an incredible 65% increased fire damage and becoming a new ranked spell at level 30, its impact will be substantial.

You can feasibly employ this build up to level 40, swapping out Rank 2 Rain of Fire at level 34 if it proves to outperform Hellfire or if your group struggles to handle the intensity.

3. Shadow Cleave

But hitting level 30 gives us a brand new option and takes us into our third and final leveling build: the Shadow Cleave. 

What makes level 30 so interesting is that not only do we get a new rank of Shadow Bolt at level 28. We can finally reach Ruin in the Destruction tree. This primes us to be Shadow Bolt spamming demons and I am 100% here for it. 

The spec we'll run is a standard Shadow build and the runes we will choose are Demonic Tactics, Shadow Bolt Volley, and Demonic Grace. These runes synergize very well together as Improved Shadow Bolt and Ruin rely heavily on crit. 

The combination of Demonic Grace and Demonic Tactics give us 40% increased chance to crit on top of our base chance from gear. 

So the rotation would go: we would pop Demonic Grace on cooldown, spam Shadow Bolt Volley, and sit back and watch the numbers pop. 

Conclusion

None of these 3 builds consider the new runes introduced in Phase 2. They are solely centered on achieving maximum efficiency up to level 40.

Speaking from personal experience, wandering around early in Phase 1 to collect runes proved to be a significant time sink. In reality, we already possess all the necessary tools to reach the level cap.