While many players enjoy the journey, there are some who just want to rush to the endgame to start that sweet, sweet Diablo grind, and well, that means having a good leveling build to get there fast. While Warlock’s skills are among the best and most versatile, some are better when it comes to dealing damage and clearing enemy hordes fast. For that reason, here is our fast leveling build for Warlock in Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred.
Best Leveling Build for Warlock
Contrary to other classes, we discovered that focusing on Occult and Abyss skills only makes for one of the best leveling builds for Warlocks in Diablo 4, and one that is extremely easy to make and stick to, without a complicated rotation, even on Expert difficulty.
First, let’s go over the skills you’ll need:
| Skill Name | Slot |
| Doom | Basic |
| Dread Claws | Core |
| Dark Prison | Defensive |
| Tyrant’s Grasp | Archfiend |
| Sigil of Subversion | Sigil |
| Summon Laalish | Soul Shard |
For this build, we’ll be focusing mostly on Occult and Abyss skills, with the only exception of Tyrant’s Grasp, which belongs to Hellfire, but serves as a good crowd control ability.
As a quick explanation, you’ll want to focus on skills that Hex enemies, as this will increase the capabilities of almost all your DPS skills. In terms of upgrades and skill levels, this is what you need:
- Doom – 15/15
- Echo
- Wrath
- Contagion
- Dread Claws – 15/15 or more with Talisman
- Cost Reduction
- Vulnerable
- Cascading Dread
- Dark Prison – 15/15 or more with Talisman
- Weaken
- Fortify
- Calamity Cage
- Tyrant’s Grasp – 10/15
- Unstoppable Damage
- Knock Down
- Abyssal Pit
- Sigil of Subversion – 10/15
- Movement Speed
- Slow
- Infiltration Trails
- Mastermind Shard (Class Mechanic – Level 15)
- Blasphemous Fragment (Class Mechanic – Level 30)
- Summon Laalish
In terms of what to unlock first, always focus on unlocking the skill and upgrades first, and if you hit a wall that requires you to reach a level before unlocking an upgrade, spend skill points to rank up any of your active skills. Also, in terms of priority, rank up Dread Claws first, as this skill will be your main DPS one.
Best Leveling Aspects
Last but not least, we also need to take a look at some Aspects that will make this leveling build work even better. These are the ones we recommend:
- Aspect of Calamity: Hex increases your Critical Strike Chance against an enemy by 20% per stack.
- Aspect of Inner Calm: While standing still, deal up to 75% increased damage.
- Aspect of Peril: Making an enemy Vulnerable increases the damage you do to them by 34%.
- Crushing Aspect: While Fortified, you deal 65% increased damage.
- Aspect of Voracious Rage: Killing an enemy with a core skill refunds 30% of base cost.
- Aspect of Misfortune: Hexed enemies that try to attack you have a 30% chance to instead be Knocked Down for 3 seconds.
As for how to play the build, we recommend this rotation:
- Cast your Dark Prison followed by your Sigil.
- Summon Laalish.
- Spam Dread Claws until your resource runs out and spam Doom.
- Only use Tyrant’s Grasp when overwhelmed.
The truth is that this leveling build for Warlock in Diablo 4 is pretty straightforward and helped us reach max level and complete the campaign at expert difficulty without issues. Of course, you might have to fine-tune a few things if you reach higher difficulty levels, but this build should help you for a while.
