Demonology on Heroic Madness

[Fatham]

Hello all,

I have been actively reading the forums for a few months now and appreciate everything that has been contributed thus far. My guild and I are on our 3rd day attempting heroic madness of deathwing and, given our raid composition, I will be playing Demo for this fight.

The other thread on Heroic Madness strategies focused primarily on affliction as the #1 spec. Checking WoL, however, I noticed that the top demo players are adopting some interesting strategies and builds. Take the #1 warlock, for instance, "Darkzyrklord." He is specced into 0/31/10 and is replacing glyph of incinerate for glyph of corruption and glyph of soulstone for glyph of shadowbolt.

My first interpretation of this is that, at the haste levels on madness, if you factor in lust and some other procs it is very easy to go below the GCD on incinerate. My other interpretation is that he could multi-dot the arm, mutated corruption, and bloods to proc some nice instant shadow bolts. Anyways, I will be speccing into this build tonight and will see how it goes.

My previous attempts I was 3/31/7 and was doing around 55k dps. Please note that my guild does not DPS the arm right away and I am not allowed to multidot the arm while I'm doing the mutated corruption in order to avoid pushing the health of the arm down too soon. If you are interested, please see my WoL at: worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-93ld918f1eb9fn0w/details/3/

I would like to start this thread to include strategies for playing a demonology warlock on heroic madness. I have been using purely rain of fire to proc spellweave but, in your experiences, is hellfire better for the congenial bloods in phase 2? Do you have any general tips for how to maximize spellweave procs? What would you do if you couldn't multidot and had to throttle DPS on platforms before the mutilated corruption spawns?

Thanks to all in advance.

[OOMM]

Darkzyrklord himself made a post mentioning his strats for this (and other fights) here http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3710773960 and http://us.battle.net/wow/en/search?f...wing&sort=time

[Fatham]

3/31/7 is ONLY for SINGLE target with T13 HM BiS.

Paraclef, thanks for this clarification. I've read plenty of posts about 3/31/7 vs. 0/31/10 and didn't really make the connection that this spec was being used mainly for the quicker immolates, I guess I was focusing more on whether spamming corruption on everything would be beneficial with this spec. I apologize if I bored you with this comment but, again, my focus on this thread was meant to be a little more than builds and rather about strategies, as well.

Darkzyrklord himself made a post mentioning his strats for this (and other fights) here

OOMM, I appreciate you linking these for me and I remember reading them in the past but didn't make the connection that this warlock was the same that I saw on the top of the WoL list. Anyways, I read his part and he wrote surprisingly little on demonology and focused more on affliction. For those of you just joining this discussion, here is what he wrote about Demo:

Demonology: Only use if nobody else is bringing 10% spell power.

- Roughly 10k to 20k dps behind Affliction at the end of the fight.
- Requires melee range to maximize damage, but being in melee range of the corruption tentacle is a big no-no.
- Neither Immolation Aura, nor Hellfire proc spellweaving in an effective manner.
- Horrendously bad for fast target swaps.
- Immolate does last a long time, which is good for bloods.
- Mana feed means you won't need to life tap much.
**Taken from OOMM's link to battle.net**

From his description of "Immolate does last a long time, which is good for bloods" lead us to assume that he is tab-spamming immolate on the bloods? What other strats do you guys use?

[Palmz]

From his description of "Immolate does last a long time, which is good for bloods" lead us to assume that he is tab-spamming immolate on the bloods? What other strats do you guys use?

Yeah that was true pre nerfs and lesser ilvls of gear but blood strats have changed since then (mostly?). The bloods go down so fast now that its a waste of time to sit there and tab immolate on blood. You could throw out some corruptions. Usually as demo you'll be forced to just shadowflame and rain of fire if you save the bloods for the 2nd parasite after you kill the corrupted tenticle. Same with phase 2. Because every other class will likely produce better numbers against a Demo lock on spellweave i wouldn't sweat it. You'll do just fine with shadowflame and rain of fire.

[Jainzar]

Demo is incredibly, retardedly bad on madness. Do not play it.

[Fatham]

From his description of "Immolate does last a long time, which is good for bloods" lead us to assume that he is tab-spamming immolate on the bloods? What other strats do you guys use?

Yeah that was true pre nerfs and lesser ilvls of gear but blood strats have changed since then (mostly?). The bloods go down so fast now that its a waste of time to sit there and tab immolate on blood. You could throw out some corruptions. Usually as demo you'll be forced to just shadowflame and rain of fire if you save the bloods for the 2nd parasite after you kill the corrupted tenticle. Same with phase 2. Because every other class will likely produce better numbers against a Demo lock on spellweave i wouldn't sweat it. You'll do just fine with shadowflame and rain of fire.

This is great information, thank you!

[eschatological]

Our lock plays demo on H-Madness. He just shadowflames and Rain of Fires though, since hellfire is so bad. He also stands melee range of the corruptions, but we don't use a strat where we soak a second impale with an immunity class. Demo has problems with HoG applying the crit chance debuff on some mobs, iirc, on this fight, but 1) our lock is most comfortable in demo, and 2) the extra 4% spellpower helped both our healers and our other legendary wielding casters (spriest/mage). We had more than enough AoE with a frost DK and SV hunter +mind sear + Arcane Explosion post nerf that blood damage was largely irrelevant then.

[OOMM]

This is the post I meant to link to http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...60?page=16#301


Off topic: From my experience and testing on the other topic I've found that either spec and reforge setup are capable of very high dps. I've tested Incinerate and Shadow Bolt specs and full mastery, full haste, and 1993 haste reforges and had high ranking logs with all combinations. Optimal play is much more important than these things though obviously one setup will perform still highest in certain situations. With the Incinerate spec every Immolate cast is a lost .5 seconds, after a couple Immolates the advantage is gone. You wouldn't want to use it on Yors, Hagara, boat, Spine, or Madness. It should be fine on the others depending on your strategy and skill, but the safe bet is to use it only on Morchok (normal) and Ultraxion. A full set of haste is great if you are playing two specs since it does well for Demo too. It feels like a new spec with fast casts and more Metas, however, I've still performed best with a full mastery reforge. If you are needed as Demo I'd recommend having both specs and reforging for mastery. If you are able to swap specs using Incinerate for Demo and reforging for haste works pretty well too.

[Hangrah]

The benefit of adding the extra 4% sp must be really huge to consider going demo, i downed it the first day of the 10% nerf as affliction with no ele shaman. The added haste just shines with affliction as well as the target changes which are easily covered by soul swap. I would go demo if your team lacks of gear, boosting sp to healers and casters.

[Fatham]

Thanks everyone for your comments. My group is 2-healing it and they really like the added spell power so it is very important that I stay demo. I've picked up on some good tips though and I'm excited to try it this Sunday. Given that we do not multidot, for me I see that the 3/31/7 spec is better because I am essentially doing a series of single targets rather than a ton of switching (disregarding parasites and blistering tentacles). I was pulling around 55k dps as 3/31/7 and dropped to 51.5k dps as 0/31/10 today. If you're interested, see the following logs:

w w w. worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-93ld918f1eb9fn0w/sum/damageDone/?s=7758&e=8447
w w w. worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-fr6ierx87x19es62/sum/damageDone/?s=3634&e=4455

I appreciate everyone's input and will provide any tips or strats they I come up with in the future.

[Deleted]

We just got our first 25H kill yesterday, and i was playing (shadowbolt) demo : i pulled 80k, rank 27 with 10k spell, 2k haste, and 20 mastery. We even stopped the dps on the yellow platform limb so it doesn't start stacking, and we kept no blood at all. All in all it was pleasant and i by no mean felt underpowered

As for the 4% spellbuff, imho it's a free boost for everyone, and when it sums up on every player, it's making for the dps difference our specs. During our progression nights, i've tested affliction (and reforged accordingly) so not providing the buff and me being demo (with the same setup as above) : when playing demo and providing 4% additionnal spellpower, our total raid dps was higher when playing demo than affliction, even if i was pulling 10-15k personnal dps with affliction. Btw i'm used to playing all three specs, so i can safely say there's no problem there. Just test it for yourself and look at raid dps, not only yourselves.

[kaib]

as long as you don't hellfire bloods (doesn't proc spellweave, guess would be too powerful as it ticks so often), you're fine as demo. don't get what the fuzz is about. long fight, so you get two doomguards, which benefits demo a lot more then the other specs. you won't win dmg done on the bloods, but as someone said above, that does not matter anyway, they die so fast now. on all the other mobs you should be more then competitive. just try to not dps whore and use your meta on each corrupted tentacle and don't use it on CD (as in wasting it on the winged tentacle).

[Fatham]

just try to not dps whore and use your meta on each corrupted tentacle and don't use it on CD (as in wasting it on the winged tentacle).

Are you saying that it's better to use Metamorphosis on CD rather than waiting to line it up with the double-damage phase on the arm/wing during Cataclysm?

[Ciani]

Hellfire does indeed proc spellweave. Fixed in 4.3.3

[Fatham]

Hellfire does indeed proc spellweave. Fixed in 4.3.3

Has this been confirmed? I can't see any detailed patch notes on Blizzards website. If this is true, should we then use hellfire instead? I would think so.

[Hangrah]

Hellfire does indeed proc spellweave. Fixed in 4.3.3

Source please.

[gakpad]

It wasn't prodding it for me last Saturday so I'm going to say that no, it has not been patched.

[Fatham]

It wasn't prodding it for me last Saturday so I'm going to say that no, it has not been patched.

I looked at a WoL of mine from 2 days ago and it was not proccing Spellweave either.

[Darkzyrklord]

This thread is great and has a ton of information usable for warlocks in heroic raiding. However, it's important to use it as a source of information and not "the truth". It's all based on his opinions, nothing more. For example, he seems to target 25-man more so if you're a 10-man guild, do not trust everything.

I currently have the #1 Demonology parse on Heroic Madness 10 man. I don't know how much closer to "the truth" I can get.

[Deleted]

I currently have the #1 Demonology parse on Heroic Madness 10 man. I don't know how much closer to "the truth" I can get.

top madness parse means nothing, its all about useless (spellweave)dmg on the bloods (and you have a lot of it ). your mutated corruption, arm/wing tentacle, corrupted parasite dmg is pretty mediocre. but all #1-5 parses for almost all classes have that in common.
dont get me wrong, you seem to be a good warlock, but "i have the #1 Demonology parse on Heroic Madness 10 man, what i say is the truth" sounds a little cocky, especially for someone who should know whats important for a top parse and whats important for a high performance on 10 man madness. these two things arent always the same :x.