THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · DISPATCH · RESEARCH CHECKED NOVEMBER 6, 2026
Short answer: your Voidwalker isn't bugged. Blizzard's November 2 development notes changed Warlock pets to get 2 health per point of your Stamina instead of 7.5, which cuts the health a pet gets from you by about 73%. Two days into launch, the US and EU Forever forums have more than a dozen threads saying the Voidwalker can't tank one mob of its own level, and the biggest have about 80 replies each. Blizzard hasn't replied in any of them, and the November 5 hotfixes didn't touch Warlocks. Until something changes, the Demonology talents that heal and buff your pet make leveling much easier, and you can have them all by level 22.
What changed
The line is in the Warlock section of Kaivax's November 2 development notes, the same patch that raised damage for every other class and gave higher-level mobs more health:
"Pets now gain 2 Health per point of Master's Stamina (was 7.5 Health per point of Master's Stamina)."
The 7.5 figure is the one Classic used, so this is a straight cut against the version of the game most Warlocks remember. Your pet still has its own base health. What shrinks is the part it borrows from you, and that part grows as you level. At 10 Stamina the pet loses 55 health. At 100 Stamina it loses 550. That is why players say it "gets worse the higher level you get".
We covered the notes when they came out in our November 2 patch breakdown. At the time the worry was theoretical. One reply in the "Latest warlock changes" thread said leveling to 30 in beta had been "buttery smooth". Now people are leveling on live realms, and it no longer looks theoretical.
What players are reporting
The first live thread, "Voidwalker has half the health of Classic WOW", went up at 04:30 UTC on November 5, about 13 hours after servers opened. It had 80 posts and 2,743 views by Friday morning. The opening post reads, in full: "Call me crazy, but maybe the pet health nerfs were a little excessive." "Please look into warlock pet HP" followed four hours later and reached 78 posts. Its first post says the Voidwalker "has less hp than the warlock when you get it" and "can barely tank a single mob", and that "Demonology was a really fun leveling spec in the beta, but it seems unplayable for leveling with the pets current state."
The most specific numbers so far come from a thread titled "Hunter pet 500 hp warlock pet 150hp can we fix this" (33 posts). The poster says they grouped with a Hunter of the same level. They saw 150 to 170 health on their Imp, 300 to 330 on their Voidwalker, and 500 to 550 on the Hunter's pet. Those are one player's readings, not a measured test, but nobody in the thread disputes them. Another poster says a level 12 Hunter wolf has as much health as a level 25 Succubus.
Several players think health isn't the only problem. One reply in "Voidwalker Dies to One Mob Now" says they have to channel Health Funnel twice to top the pet up after a single same-level mob. They say an Era Voidwalker has close to 50% armor, while the Forever one has "about the same armor as the fresh Paladin out of Deathknell wearing whites and grays". Another thread is titled "Voidwalker also taking 40-50% more damage than a classic Void". We haven't been able to check the armor values, so treat that as a player claim. If it's right, it would explain why the pet feels worse than the health numbers alone suggest.
Europe has the same threads. "Warlock 73% pet hp nerf?" went up on the EU forum on November 3, the day after the notes, and has 85 posts. Since launch it has been joined by "Warlock Pet HP nerf - unplayable", "Revert the warlock pet HP nerf" and others. On the US side, the newer threads have titles like "Hotfix warlock now" (40 posts), "Bring voidwalker back to 7.5 quick!" (38) and "Devs... what did you do?", where an Orc Warlock at level 15 says they are parking the character until it is fixed.
Why Blizzard did it
Blizzard hasn't explained this change. The patch notes list it without a developer's note. The forum's working theory is PvP, and the timeline supports it.
This is the second pet health cut. On October 16, during the beta, a thread called "Warlock pets badly nerfed, bug or intentional?" reported that Voidwalkers had lost about 1,000 health at level 30, with no patch note. That thread reached 249 posts. It came two days before The Forever Open, Blizzard's $100,000 level 30 duel tournament. Warlocks won anyway: all four finalists ran a Soul Link build, with Soul Link sending 30% of the Warlock's damage to the pet. Threads like "Turns out locks are still the best 1v1 class" (163 posts) followed. The November 2 cut came two weeks later.
Not everyone thinks Blizzard got this wrong. On October 16, one player argued that Fear and Seduction plus "an unkillable pet" was too much, and that "Blizzard has noted that to give they have to claw something back". Soul Link Warlocks really were very hard to kill one on one at 30. The pushback is about where the nerf landed. The most common complaint, put most clearly in "Pet Stamina Scaling Nerf (7.5 -> 2) Guts Warlocks & Demonology Before Launch", is that Blizzard "could have easily nerfed its threat generation" or Soul Link itself, rather than "gutting its health pool" for everyone. Another player wrote that nobody levels the way tournament players played, "spending like 1000 gold on just consumes".
Blizzard did leave itself room to act. The same November 2 notes say: "With the exception of bugs and serious outliers, we don't plan on making big tuning changes between now and the opening of the raids next month." Raids open in December. The question is whether Blizzard counts a leveling Voidwalker as a serious outlier.
How to level a Warlock right now
The best workaround on the forum comes from "For Warlocks Struggling with Voidwalker, do this". It spends your first 13 points in Demonology, which you will have by level 22:
| Talent | Points | What it does for the pet |
|---|---|---|
| Improved Health Funnel | 2/2 | 40% more healing, 30% cheaper, no threat |
| Unholy Power | 3/5 | 6% more pet damage, needed to unlock row 2 |
| Demonic Energies | 2/2 | Heals your pet for 15% of the spell damage you deal |
| Fel Vitality | 3/3 | 15% more pet health and mana |
| Improved Voidwalker | 3/3 | 30% stronger Torment, Consume Shadows, Sacrifice and Suffering |
Demonic Energies is the important one. It's a new Forever talent, and it turns every Shadow Bolt and Corruption tick into pet healing, so you spend far less time channeling Health Funnel. You can check the full tree in our talent calculator. A reply in the same thread asked for a free respec, since Warlocks are "effectively forced to play 1 spec". Our guess is that won't happen unless Blizzard changes pets, but respec cost is already a sore point, with a separate 77-post thread complaining that the first reset costs a full gold.
If you're going Affliction anyway, the old Classic habit still works: put the pet on passive or use it as a damage dealer and let Drain Life and your DoTs carry you. If you haven't picked a class yet, keep in mind that our tier list Warlock grade was set before this change.
What to watch
The only thing that matters now is whether a Warlock fix shows up in a hotfix list. Kaivax posts those on the forums. Nothing has gone out yet: the November 5 list covers respawns, vendor bags and Plainsrunning, and there's no blue post in any pet thread. A partial revert is the obvious middle ground, and the Hunter-comparison poster suggested 4 or 5 health per Stamina. We'll update this page when Blizzard says something. For the rest of launch week, including the Horde PvP lock and the day-two bug list, see our launch dispatch.
Sources: Kaivax, Blizzard forums, WoW Forever Beta Development Notes, Updated November 2 (November 3, 2026, 03:20 UTC) and WoW: Forever Hotfixes, November 5, 2026 (November 6, 2026, 02:34 UTC); US forum threads Voidwalker has half the health of Classic WOW (November 5, 2026), Please look into warlock pet HP (November 5, 2026), Hunter pet 500 hp warlock pet 150hp can we fix this (November 6, 2026), Voidwalker Dies to One Mob Now (November 5, 2026), For Warlocks Struggling with Voidwalker, do this (November 6, 2026), Devs... what did you do? (November 6, 2026), Pet Stamina Scaling Nerf (7.5 -> 2) Guts Warlocks & Demonology Before Launch (November 3, 2026), Warlock pets badly nerfed, bug or intentional? (October 16, 2026) and 1 Gold to reset talents the first time is insane (November 5, 2026); EU forum thread Warlock 73% pet hp nerf? (November 3, 2026). Post counts checked November 6, 2026, 07:30 UTC. Talent text from Wowhead's Forever database via our talent calculator data (checked November 6, 2026).