Our other Warlock guides take you from 10 to 60: the starter guide, Destruction, Affliction leveling and Demonology's Soul Link build. This one covers what comes after 60: which stats each Warlock spec should gear for, why hit matters so much before raids, how your demon now copies your gear, and how to plan pre-raid gear before the first raids open.
Key dates (Blizzard): name reservation is open until Nov 3. Launch is Nov 4, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. PST. Barrow Deeps (10 players), Hyjal Summit (20) and Onyxia's Lair (40) open Dec 9.
Read this first: the beta stopped at level 30, so nobody has geared a level 60 Warlock in Forever yet. The stat weights below come from SixtySim, a community simulator running beta client data and marked "unverified until level 60 opens". Where Forever hasn't published a number (a boss's spell miss chance), it uses Classic's. Treat every number as a starting point.
What Forever changed about Warlock gear
From Blizzard's Deep Dive recap:
- Hit and crit are each one stat now. Melee, ranged and spell hit are combined, and so are the three kinds of crit. For a Warlock that means any item with "chance to hit" or "critical strike" counts for your spells.
- Bonus healing also gives one third as much bonus damage, and caster weapons now carry spell damage and healing.
- Every dungeon drop was re-examined, unique boss items are now blue (rare) quality, and set bonuses were improved.
From Blizzard's Rogue & Warlock class deep dive, the parts that touch gear:
- Pets now scale from their summoner's stats. Your gear is your demon's gear.
- Firestone and Spellstone are weapon imbues now and stack with Wizard Oil. Firestone gives Fire damage and crit, Spellstone gives Shadow damage and spell haste.
- Life Tap scales with Spirit, so Spirit is no longer a dead stat (it's just a small one, see below).
- Suppression (Affliction) is redesigned: up to 5% hit and 20% less threat. It's the only talent source of hit.
- Curse of the Elements now covers all magic damage. Curse of Shadows is gone.
- Ruin sits on row 3 and is 5 points now, so Demonology and hybrid builds can reach double-damage crits. Malevolence (Affliction) adds up to 5% crit chance to Shadow spells.
Stat priorities by spec (level 60, simulated)
From SixtySim (updated Oct 28, pre-raid gear, beta data). Every spec is counted in points of spell damage (= 1.00). Hit, crit and casting speed are per 1%, the rest per point.
| Spec | 1 boss, 1 minute | 1 boss, 3 minutes | Gear for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Affliction (30/0/21) | 1% casting speed 15.6, 1% crit 12.2, 1% hit 11.8, spell piercing 1.39, Shadow dmg 0.90, Int 0.48 | 1% crit 12.7, 1% hit 11.4, 1% casting speed 10.9, spell piercing 1.31, Int 0.37 | Spell damage, then crit and hit. Haste on short fights |
| Demonology (2/31/18) | 1% casting speed 18.1, 1% hit 14.3, 1% crit 11.7, spell piercing 1.33, Shadow dmg 0.84, Int 0.22 | 1% hit 14.5, 1% crit 11.3, 1% casting speed 8.30, spell piercing 1.22, Int 0.42 | Hit first on anything longer than a minute |
| Destruction (21/0/30, Succubus) | 1% hit 11.9, 1% crit 11.9, 1% casting speed 11.7, spell piercing 1.36, Shadow dmg 0.78, Int 0.32 | 1% hit 13.0, 1% crit 12.2, 1% casting speed 8.49, Int 0.43 | Hit to 17%, then crit and spell damage |
| DS/Ruin (21/11/19, community build) | 1% crit 12.0, 1% hit 11.6, 1% casting speed 8.06, spell piercing 1.38, Shadow dmg 0.91, Int 0.57 | 1% crit 12.1, 1% hit 11.3, 1% casting speed 8.15, Int 0.38 | Crit and hit, take whichever the item offers |
What stands out, per SixtySim:
- Plain spell damage beats Shadow damage. Shadow damage is worth 0.78 to 0.91 because Immolate and Searing Pain are Fire. Fire-only damage is worth 0.09 to 0.21. An item with spell damage beats one with as much Shadow damage.
- Crit is worth more than its tooltip. Ruin makes Destruction spells crit for 200%, Pandemic does the same for Corruption, the banes and drains, and Forever lets DoT ticks crit. Spell crit has no cap.
- Casting speed is a short-fight stat. On one minute you barely Life Tap, so every second saved is another cast. On longer fights part of it goes to the Life Taps that pay for those casts (Demonology: 18.1 on one minute, 8.30 on three).
- On packs (three bosses) every percentage stat shrinks next to spell damage, because Corruption and the banes tick on every target. Affliction's casting speed drops to about 5.8.
- Spell piercing is worth more than spell damage on one boss (1.22 to 1.39). In the beta, piercing past a target's zero resistance came back as bonus damage, about 0.2% per point on direct hits and a tenth of that on ticks. SixtySim says its size at 60 is untested, and no item in the pre-raid sets carries it.
- Why gear matters more for Warlocks: SixtySim says Forever's Warlock spells do about half their Classic base damage, so more of every cast comes from spell power. Big flask, big gain (below).
Hit: one cap, and you're nowhere near it (partly unconfirmed)
- 17% hit: your spells stop missing. That's Classic's spell miss chance against a level 63 boss; Forever hasn't published its spell table. SixtySim says Forever keeps no "last 1% always misses", so every percent counts all the way to 17%.
- Where you'll actually be: Affliction, Destruction and DS/Ruin take 5% from Suppression and reach 8.0% with pre-raid gear. Demonology keeps only one or two points of Suppression and sits at 4.0%. Either way you still miss roughly one spell in ten (or one in eight for Demonology), so hit never stops paying before raids.
- Three pieces carry 1% hit each in every SixtySim set: Deathmist Mask (quest), Arcanoweave Cloak and Blessed Band of Light (both from Pix Xizzix in Stranglethorn Vale).
- Partial resists: SixtySim's beta logs show none from a target's level alone, only where a target has resistance. Nobody has logged a level 63 boss yet.
Your demon wears your gear
Forever's "pets scale from their summoner's stats", and SixtySim models it like this:
- Your Succubus takes all of your spell hit for Lash of Pain and 8/17 of it as melee hit, so its swings reach their own 8% cap only when your spells reach 17%.
- It crits at exactly your spell crit, with nothing extra on top.
- It turns your spell damage into its own: a tenth as spell power and 17% as attack power, Shadow and Fire damage included.
- How much it matters: the Succubus does 14.6% of a Demonology Warlock's damage and 6.4% of the Succubus Destruction build's.
- Demonology stacks four bonuses on every Shadow Bolt: sacrifice the Imp for Burning Shadow (15% Shadow damage), summon a Succubus, and Demonic Pact keeps the sacrifice alive while Master Demonologist, Soul Link and Demonic Knowledge add theirs. If the Succubus dies, summon another Succubus; bringing the Imp back cancels Burning Shadow.
- Caveat: the Succubus's own weapon and 186 attack power are drawn out from level 20 and 30 character sheets, and Demonic Brand's number of empowered hits differs between the client data (six), Wowhead's tooltip (three) and Blizzard's notes (two).
Life Tap, Spirit and Intellect
- Spirit: each point adds a point of mana to every Life Tap, 1.2 with Improved Life Tap. Since Life Tap already makes mana cheap, SixtySim puts Spirit at only 0.09 to 0.14 on three-minute fights. Don't chase it.
- Intellect: every 60.6 Intellect is 1% crit, and each point adds 15 mana. It's worth 0.22 to 0.58 depending on spec and fight length.
- MP5 is close to worthless on one boss for one minute (0.00 to 0.17) and around 0.3 to 0.4 on longer ones.
- Life Tap costs health your healers have to give back. On a three-minute fight Destruction taps about 12 times and Demonology about 4.3 times a minute.
Dreadmist Raiment vs Felheart: what's actually available
Dreadmist Raiment is the eight-piece cloth Warlock dungeon set. Forever reworked its bonuses. Per the beta client, as listed on ForeverDB and ForeverDiff:
| Pieces | Bonus |
|---|---|
| 2 | +8 all resistances |
| 3 | Up to +18 spell damage and healing |
| 4 | When struck in combat, 2% chance to make the attacker flee in terror for 2 sec (once every 60 sec) |
| 5 | Your spellcasts have a 5% chance to heal you for 270 to 330 |
| 6 | Restores 8 mana per 5 sec |
In Classic it was +200 armor (2), +23 spell damage and healing (4), the fear proc (6) and +8 all resistances (8). The damage bonus now comes at three pieces instead of four.
Does it make the cut? No. No SixtySim set wears a piece. The closest is Dreadmist Mask (Darkmaster Gandling, Scholomance per SixtySim), 12.0 DPS behind Deathmist Mask on Destruction's list. Don't mix them up: Deathmist is a separate quest-reward set, and its mask's 1% hit is why it wins.
Felheart Raiment (Classic's tier 1 Warlock set) is in Forever's client with its Classic bonuses unchanged: 3 pieces: 15% more from Drain Life and Drain Mana; 5 pieces: your pet gains 15 Stamina and 100 resistance to all schools; 8 pieces: Shadow spells cost 15% less mana. But ForeverDB says none of its pieces are in the client's item data yet, and Molten Core isn't one of the three raids opening Dec 9. So it isn't part of a pre-raid plan.
Pre-raid planning: one set for every spec
SixtySim builds each set from items whose Forever stats are published, and all four Warlock builds land on nearly the same set, so you only collect one. wow4ever builds its own list from items with a known source and a simple stat-weight rule ("a gearing aid, not a simulation") and says many numbers are still Classic ones until launch, so the two disagree in places.
SixtySim's core set:
- Staff: Ironbark Staff (88 spell damage, 2% crit), Exalted with your Arathi Basin faction (The Defilers or The League of Arathor). It's in every set. Before Exalted, Alliance can buy Crackling Staff (6.5 to 8.4 DPS behind). Horde can't buy it, and their next weapon (the crafted Sageblade, or Staff of Jordan on Destruction) costs 10.8 to 25.9 DPS. Start Arathi Basin reputation early.
- Chest: Robe of the Void, a Warlock-only Tailoring robe (46 spell damage, its use heals your demon). It binds on pickup, so you have to be the tailor. Without it, Robe of Winter Night costs 6.0 to 11.1 DPS.
- More Tailoring (bind on equip, so you can buy them): Mantle of the Timbermaw, Gloves of Spell Mastery, Belt of the Archmage, and Earthen Silk Slippers (item level 36, 24 spell damage), which tie with Omnicast Boots (Golem Lord Argelmach, Blackrock Depths) within about 3 DPS.
- Pix Xizzix (Stranglethorn Vale): Arcanoweave Cloak and Blessed Band of Light (1% hit each), plus Weakness Analyzer (22 spell damage; use: 5% crit until your next non-tick crit, every 90 sec).
- Trinket: Talisman of Ascendance (Eastern Plaguelands quest): each spell adds 8 spell damage, up to 40, for six spells or 20 sec, once a minute. The next trinket is 11.5 to 15.3 DPS behind.
- Reputation: Outrider's / Sentinel's Silk Leggings (Warsong Gulch quartermasters) and Brilliant Watcher's Signet (The Watchers; the Revered version is within about 2 DPS of Exalted on Affliction).
- Also: Deathmist Mask (quest, 1% hit), Chains of the Lich (Balzaphon, Stratholme), Dryad's Wrist Bindings (vendor), and Greater Eternal Wand (Enchanting, bind on equip). Only the wand's stats count: per SixtySim, Forever's wand shots no longer gain from spell damage.
wow4ever's list is different: more dungeon drops, no vendor or reputation items. Spellweaver's Turban and Briarwood Reed (Upper Blackrock Spire), Dark Advisor's Pendant and Bonecreeper Stylus (Scholomance), Skyshroud Leggings (Lower Blackrock Spire), Maleki's Footwraps (Stratholme), Burst of Knowledge (Blackrock Depths), Hide of the Wild (Leatherworking), Radiant Staff (Enchanting) and Robe of Winter Night instead of Robe of the Void. Both sites agree on Mantle of the Timbermaw, Gloves of Spell Mastery and Belt of the Archmage: Tailoring is the big Warlock profession.
Enchants (SixtySim, every spec): Spellblasting (65 spell damage, Merchant's Favor formula from Beneris in The Barrens or Alynsia in Redridge) on the staff; Arcanum of Focus on head and legs; Spell Power on the neck (Forever lets you enchant necklaces); Greater Spellpower on bracers; Mystic Rugged Armor Kit (6 spell damage) on chest and feet; Minor Haste or the armor kit on gloves. Minor Haste's source isn't settled: Wowhead lists it at Annora in Uldaman but tags the scroll "PTR only", and no beta tester has confirmed it.
Consumables (SixtySim, worth on one boss for one minute):
- Flask of Supreme Power is the biggest single buy: 11.8% to 13.0% of your damage.
- Brilliant Wizard Oil and a Major Spellstone go on the same staff. Oil 3.7% to 4.1%, Major Spellstone (21 Shadow damage, 2% casting speed) 3.5% to 4.5%. SixtySim never picked Firestone.
- Greater Arcane Elixir (2.8–3.0%) and Elixir of Shadow Power (2.6–3.1%) together; Forever's client shows no elixir categories that would stop it.
- Lobster Stew (Feralas Cooking recipe, 28 spell damage) 2.2–2.4%.
- Mana: Major Mana Potion (1.7–3.9%) and Demonic Rune (0.0–2.6%). The rune costs health on top of Life Tap's.
Remember the catch: per Blizzard's interviews (as reported by WoW Classic Forever), there's no Dungeon Journal, and you can't see an item's stats until it has dropped for you or on your server. Use these lists to plan where to go, not as a final shopping list.
Where to farm at 55–60
Blizzard's new endgame dungeons are Blackmaw Hold (55–60) and Shaper's Terrace (58–60), and Icy Veins still lists their loot as "Coming Soon". The Classic endgame dungeons are also in Forever: Blackrock Depths, Lower and Upper Blackrock Spire, Dire Maul, Scholomance and Stratholme (Icy Veins dungeon overview). Most of SixtySim's Warlock set is crafted, sold or reputation, so Tailoring, gold, Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch reputation get you further than dungeon luck. Stratholme (Chains of the Lich) is the one dungeon on every SixtySim list.
Side note: where Warlocks rank
On SixtySim's Oct 28 rankings (pre-raid, one boss, one minute), Demonology is #3 of 25 damage specs (1,037.3 DPS), Affliction #8 (946.1), Destruction #12 (910.4) and DS/Ruin #13 (901.7). On packs it changes: against three bosses for three minutes Demonology is #6 and Affliction #8. Destruction also has a Sacrifice build that drops the Succubus for Demonic Sacrifice: 1–3% behind on one boss, 2–4% ahead on three. Simulated on beta data: a curiosity until real logs exist.
Still unclear
- Forever's spell table. The 17% spell hit cap is Classic's.
- How strong spell piercing really is past zero resistance at level 60.
- The Succubus's own level 60 weapon and attack power, and how many hits Demonic Brand empowers.
- Whether Minor Haste (gloves) is trainable at launch.
- Real item stats and drop sources, especially from the new dungeons, and when Felheart's pieces arrive.
Sources
- Blizzard: Deep Dive panel recap (combined hit and crit, bonus healing, caster weapons, set bonuses), Rogue & Warlock class deep dive (pet scaling, Firestone/Spellstone imbues, Life Tap and Spirit, Suppression, Ruin, Demonic Pact), name reservation, pre-purchase and launch (Nov 4), raid overview (Dec 9)
- SixtySim stat weights (updated Oct 28): Affliction, Demonology, Destruction, DS/Ruin
- SixtySim pre-raid gear, enchants and consumables: Affliction, Demonology, Destruction, DS/Ruin; overviews and rankings (Succubus scaling, Demonic Pact, Sacrifice build)
- Set bonuses: Dreadmist Raiment on ForeverDB and ForeverDiff; Felheart Raiment on ForeverDB and ForeverDiff
- WoW Classic Forever: dungeons (no Dungeon Journal, item stats hidden until they drop)
Fan community guide by Systematic. World of Warcraft © Blizzard Entertainment; we're not affiliated with Blizzard.
Images: header and gearing cheat-sheet by Systematic, using the Systematic wallpaper and brand colours. Ability and item icons on the card © Blizzard Entertainment via Wowhead (Classic icons used as stand-ins; Forever's may differ). Stat weights on the card from SixtySim; set bonuses from ForeverDB/ForeverDiff.
