[5.4] Demonology Warlock Guide

[Khadjid]

There is no fury gain of using FF over SB, in fact you're losing fury because more LTs means less fillers.

If your SBs are 2.03s, then your haste is 2.5s/2.03s=1.2315... That makes your GCD 1.5s/1.2315...=1.218s. Fury per second while casting SBs is 25f/2,03s=12.315270935960591133004926108374f/s. Fury per second while casting FFs is 15f/1.218s=12.315270935960591133004926108374f/s.

No I didn't just copy the same number into each calculations, plot them into a calculator yourself and you'll find they're identical. You'll see it easier in an unhasted scenario:
25f/2.5s=10f/s
15f/1.5s=10f/s

[Deleted]

Can anyone tell me where I can find the information, that I get 100 demonic fury for killing a mob in Metamorphosis-form, in the game.
I know that it's the case, I'm just looking for the tooltip that contains the actual information ingame.

[Alarinth]

So... I went ahead and made a vid that pretty much summed up the talk I've had with firemages this entire patch about the two competing specs (Fire / Demonology).

Let me tell you the tale of Combustion...

[xuros]

So right now i use UVLS and Wushoolay's Final Choice trinkets both at 530. Last night i picked up a Cha-Ye's Essence of Brilliance thunderforged and thinking about using it with UVLS. How is Cha-Yes for demo?

[TheBGreene]

So right now i use UVLS and Wushoolay's Final Choice trinkets both at 530. Last night i picked up a Cha-Ye's Essence of Brilliance thunderforged and thinking about using it with UVLS. How is Cha-Yes for demo?

It is an okay choice. Put it this way, in 2.5 weeks you will be shelving the UVLS forever. I would say abuse UVLS until then and pairing it with either trinket is really alright. Your best bet would be to just sim with both trinkets and see the results for yourself.

Not sure if demo is going to be focused on a crit or mastery heavy build for next patch, if it is crit, cha-yes and the timeless isle trinkets would be your best bet.

[JV Chequer]

It is an okay choice. Put it this way, in 2.5 weeks you will be shelving the UVLS forever. I would say abuse UVLS until then and pairing it with either trinket is really alright. Your best bet would be to just sim with both trinkets and see the results for yourself.

Not sure if demo is going to be focused on a crit or mastery heavy build for next patch, if it is crit, cha-yes and the timeless isle trinkets would be your best bet.

My bet it's both mastery and crit builds are viable.

Since affliction will be our 1st choiche until now I guess the 9778 haste > mastery > crit build it's pretty much what we use for both specs.

[Deleted]

So right now i use UVLS and Wushoolay's Final Choice trinkets both at 530. Last night i picked up a Cha-Ye's Essence of Brilliance thunderforged and thinking about using it with UVLS. How is Cha-Yes for demo?

I personally use wush instead of cha-ye's because unless you get lucky with a double proc, cha-ye's falls off before your dark soul expires.

With wush the proc stacks up really nicely towards the end of dark soul, which is when you are dumping all your molten core procs.

[Deleted]

lol Alarinth, the best part is the whing in the forum
warlocks never complain that much

[Moruff]

Why is everyone saying they won't use UVLS starting next patch? Even if there is no guaranteed proc on pull, you can still pocket berserking and use your 2nd ds charge for when it does. It's still going to be useful to get the imps both for fury and dmg.

[TheBGreene]

Why is everyone saying they won't use UVLS starting next patch? Even if there is no guaranteed proc on pull, you can still pocket berserking and use your 2nd ds charge for when it does. It's still going to be useful to get the imps both for fury and dmg.

Because there are far better options come 5.4 with the RPPM nerf. Also as others have mentioned, glyph of EA is gone so no more 2 minute+ dooms so you aren't getting the full benefit.

[Moruff]

What are the far better options during the 2nd week of SoO? Actually, you'd need two far better options. The Immerseus trinket sure is good. Wush is pretty decent but not better. Otherwise...?

[Deleted]

Because there are far better options come 5.4 with the RPPM nerf. Also as others have mentioned, glyph of EA is gone so no more 2 minute+ dooms so you aren't getting the full benefit.

you'll still need to get them first tho. until you do, UVLS is a valid choice but tbh i wish they would go away from the whole "summon wild imp on doom crit" thing and then just make it have like a 50% chance of summoning a wild imp on tick instead since we will be able to stack other stats that are better for more of our specs but thats just me.

[Moruff]

Another somewhat related question: does anyone know how the unlucky streak prevention built into uvls is calculated or what they are for the different ilvls? I haven't been able to find it. A quick glance at my logs this week tells me it's about 3 mins for 549 uvls? I didn't see any intervals of no proc longer than that. If that's the case, it's still fairly reliable (although much less so than now) that uvls will still proc in SoO during an initial lust. Worst case scenario, we use it on a doom with only berserking/herb/eng glove haste ench (is that still happening?) without lust or meta.

[TheBGreene]

What are the far better options during the 2nd week of SoO? Actually, you'd need two far better options. The Immerseus trinket sure is good. Wush is pretty decent but not better. Otherwise...?

In regards to one you could have opening week...Wush and the timeless isle crit trinket (if there happens to be a crit demo build).

Wush lines up quite well with Meta burst/DS phases and will proc wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy more than that uvls.

Crit heavy would probably want Chan-ye (or whatever its called) and isle trinket.

Other than that I think that breath/wush is a much better option than Uvls/Xx

[Moruff]

In regards to one you could have opening week...Wush and the timeless isle crit trinket (if there happens to be a crit demo build).

Wush lines up quite well with Meta burst/DS phases and will proc wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy more than that uvls.

Crit heavy would probably want Chan-ye (or whatever its called) and isle trinket.

Other than that I think that breath/wush is a much better option than Uvls/Xx

I agree wush is a strong candidate for going into heroics. It already procs quite a bit, however having the proc duration nerfed to 10s weakens it a bit imo.

The isle trinket seems like just a weaker version of UVLS. The proc is 20s compared to 4s but the value of crit is in it's ability to get crit dooms. The proc on that trinket is something like 19% vs 100%. Plus it'll only proc once every 2mins. Also, it's going to have less bass int than UVLS. I understand UVLS is forcing you to pray to RNG gods, but it's going to yield more dps, more imps, more fury as long as you can respond appropriately to the proc.

Cha-ye is not better than UVLS although it is good. Breath I just don't have HTF so I doubt it'll be better than HTF UVLS. Isn't Breath going to have its proc reduced to 10s as well?

Even on live right now, I'm not always getting UVLS procs on pulls. Maybe we re-pull too fast? Maybe it's down from trash. In any case, even in those instances where it's not procing on pull, I'm still glad to have UVLS for when it does proc. You can't really make a case for another trinket yielding more benefit than 6-8 ticks of crit dooms and 6-8 more imps + whatever you want to use that other GCD during the proc for.

[Biomega]

I'm sure simulations will provide the concrete and actual data, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to find UVLS still a competitive choice with many of this tier's alternatives. I don't expect it to be BiS, but depending on loot luck (big factor in 10m) and heroic progression, I could definitely see people using it for far longer than they think.

[Werst]

My 543 UVLS is .67 proc rate on PTR. I also ran sims with/without EA glyph and it was about a 3%'ish loss...though I feel like with more realistic luck that's closer to about twice that in most situations. Hurts...but not crippling so far. Comparatively my 543 chanye is right at 1.00 proc rate which as I understand it does NOT take into consideration the crit rate inflation. Unfortunately hydra and wush are nerfed to 10 sec each with wush keeping the 1.21 RPPM and hydra having a 1.10 RPPM.

That said if we give up UVLS and go crit its pretty easy to hit 35% crit self buffed so 40% in raid....with SoO gear and some more crit centric offpieces 45% is possible. Thus when you get a timeless isle trinket proc you are now north of 60% crit. In short, getting a crit doom tick about half the time isn't going to be hard to do. Compare that to UVLS with no EA and .6x proc rate and its about the same if you are lucky in spacing out UVLS with crit definitely ahead for those whose luck isn't stellar.

I kind of feel like the 10 sec trinkets (if using rppms) + the soulfire bonus will be the new "trick" to demo. Instead of being based around RNG and a 4 sec window to make/break your parse its more about gaming the 20% dmg bonus and reacting to 10 sec procs to DF dump while we have a proc. Whether or not that playstyle can match affliction is anyone's guess.

[weakdots]

i think people have the wrong idea about t16 demo, trying to use a crit build and everything just to chase the playstyle of t15 basing dmg off crit dooms and imps that will just fall short. ill do most of my testing in the final day or 2 of the ptr but im pretty confident haste n mastery will be the top stats making afflic the viable spec to swap with on fight by fight basis

[Deleted]

I'd like to echo what weakdots said.

Remember that without glyph of EA, doom will be hitting 20% harder, and thus I don't think haste should be completely tossed aside in favour of crit just to try and force out more imps.

Mastery will remain as strong as before, especially if we take the new AD talent and line up big fury dumps with that + the new icd proc from bindings.

[Werst]

After some testing I definitely feel stronger about going crit with demo. Did an affliction cross over vs a crit centric build using amp + timeless (or chanye). Also compared it to an amp + UVLS setup. As long as I got lucky I felt okay w' the UVLS setup but luck didn't last and I fury starved. The aff crossover was BBoY and amp which again fury starved but still beat UVLS. Saw strongest results running amp + timeless though the chanye was very close on it. Could have been RNG but lining up every other doom application with the 20% crit proc on a crit centric setup gave me over 50% crit rate to my doom. All tests were with 5xT16 and my armory (550ilvl) bits elsewise.

Perhaps demo will be best with 8097 haste > crit > mast > haste if you have the ilvl to get to around 30-35% crit self buffed. "Feel" wise I think it will be a shocker to those demo locks who stack endless haste. Should feel more familiar to demo locks who have gone 8100 haste > mastery. I tend to play at just under 10K haste with the rest to mastery since it mojo's with affliction really well (live).