MoP: Demonology Warlock Guide and First Week Gear List

[Daggot Ur]

If I understand correctly you seem under the impression that you pre-pot and THEN cast a Soulfire. That's not what the guy had in mind, and why it was so difficult to pull of. His idea was to cast Soul Fire and THEN take a prepot, but before going into combet yet. So you wouldn't waste any time on your pre-pot that way.

OK, so that what was the idea. IMHO it is quite difficult to pull off because of the lag/tank pulling earlier etc

[nightrianna]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...908#Annihilare
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/x...906#Annihilare
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...773#Annihilare

Here is my some logs. I have not tried this so called, "Pre cast soulfire" yet because the shit is a long cast xD on the last link i died to a 12k tick of rain fo blades so i went from 5 to 9th and on the last phase of windlrod we hit lust n i had almost a 600k burst

[pkm]

Is demo a spec where you will eventually play it well after experience or is it one of them specs where you gotta min max everything and not screw the rotation?

At the moment I'm leaning towards affliction when I hit 90 for the somewhat easy single target rotation but demo looks pretty fun as well.

[nightrianna]

Is demo a spec where you will eventually play it well after experience or is it one of them specs where you gotta min max everything and not screw the rotation?

At the moment I'm leaning towards affliction when I hit 90 for the somewhat easy single target rotation but demo looks pretty fun as well.

Demo is a spec where you learn to play better and better with experience,however, i am thinknig Grim of Supremacy might coem out on top in full bis because dark soul does not line up with the felguard anymore to give him bonus dmg. I was shocked to find out that haste>crit>mastery is the stat priority because you would think a spec completely resolved around demons and pets would have mastery above other secondary stats

[Funkthepunk]

Ok, I've decided to go back into raiding. I previously raided as a shadow priest in Wotlk and Cataclysm, and achieved rank 1-40 as a spriest on most of all Cata heroic fights. So playing demonology is something I will take very seriously (started leveling yesterday from 85 off).

I read through the first 10 pages of this thread, and haven't been reading any EJ yet (going to after writing this), but I still have a handful of questions for some of you more experienced players:

- Is it ideal to cast the second hand of guldan on the target when your first shadowflame DoT reaches 50% duration? Is the minor glyph for any use other than potential PvP?

- I could imagine grimoire of sacrifice being the best choice at least on some fights with sustained AoE. This doesn't seem to be the case. What testing has been done so far? Is Service really the definitive DPS choice?

- As far as I understood, you want to use the wild imps glyph on cooldown (assuming single target fight with no burst phase)? How does this choice scale with gear?

- Is it really true that Hellfire is completely useless?

- Doom Guard! Can this demon gain the heroism buff (by casting it before heroism is being cast), or does it simply just upscale with the caster's stats?

- Doesn't the secondary stat values vary a lot with gear, or would you reccomend simming your own character very often?

- Will it ever become useful in metamorphis to cast soul fire, or do you only want to do this during burst/wanting to burn excess fury?

- You don't mention Chaos wave in your guide. Is it true it's not a spell to use, even in a AoE situation?

- At how many targets does immolation aura become a DPS gain? When does drain life come ahead of Soul fire/Shadowbolt?


Thanks for reading this. Hopefully some of you can answer these questions!

[zinnin]

- I could imagine grimoire of sacrifice being the best choice at least on some fights with sustained AoE. This doesn't seem to be the case. What testing has been done so far? Is Service really the definitive DPS choice?

The GoSac talent makes you lose quite a bit of fury generation, which is why it isn't very good. I believe its balanced around using it only doing DS, and re-summoning your pet out after. Don't forget you have fel storm so during periods of sustained AoE your pet is still contributing a decent amount of damage. GoSup is generally very close go GoServ and depending on the fight might be a better choice.

- As far as I understood, you want to use the wild imps glyph on cooldown (assuming single target fight with no burst phase)? How does this choice scale with gear?

Generally it isn't a dps increase to use wild imps on cooldown the passive effect and the cooldown effect both are 5 imp \ 2 minutes before haste, so you want to use Imp Swarm during your most powerful proc \ cooldowns. It still might be more dps to not use the glyph, this is very gear dependant and there is not fast \ easy answer to it.

- Is it really true that Hellfire is completely useless?

It does ~20% more damage then Harvest life and generate the same amount of fury, it is not useless

- Doom Guard! Can this demon gain the heroism buff (by casting it before heroism is being cast), or does it simply just upscale with the caster's stats?

It is based off your stats

- Doesn't the secondary stat values vary a lot with gear, or would you reccomend simming your own character very often?

This is the reason simcraft is so important, for all 3 specs the secondary stats are so close you might want to stack something different based on gear

- Will it ever become useful in metamorphis to cast soul fire, or do you only want to do this during burst/wanting to burn excess fury?

Simcraft currently casts soulfire whenever MC is up, so during meta and during caster. I have found personally to only cast it in meta if you have other cooldowns up and have extra fury.

- You don't mention Chaos wave in your guide. Is it true it's not a spell to use, even in a AoE situation?

During AoE burst it is useful during Dark Soul, otherwise you always want to make sure that HoG is on CD before going into meta for a long period of time.

- At how many targets does immolation aura become a DPS gain? When does drain life come ahead of Soul fire/Shadowbolt?

Assuming you are talking about harvest life? Well don't use harvest life, use hellfire, and it pulls ahead of shadowbolt at 3? targets, and soulfire at 5-6. Immolation Aura becomes a dps increase during cds at 2 targets, and a dps increase all the time at 3 targets.

[Funkthepunk]

...

Thanks for the very quick answers. Very helpful. The misconception from hellfire/harvest life comes from this very guide, as it suggests to use Void ray when targets are stacked up in a line, and harvest life when targets are spread. I'll just assume that this is wrong information.

[zinnin]

Thanks for the very quick answers. Very helpful. The misconception from hellfire/harvest life comes from this very guide, as it suggests to use Void ray when targets are stacked up in a line, and harvest life when targets are spread. I'll just assume that this is wrong information.

That is during Meta, if your targets aren't stacked well it may very well be better to use Harvest Life over Void Ray. Personally I just would't go into Meta for AoE then, I would just use Hellfire and use fury on single target.

However in caster form you never want to Harvest life over Hellfire.

[Funkthepunk]

That is during Meta, if your targets aren't stacked well it may very well be better to use Harvest Life over Void Ray. Personally I just would't go into Meta for AoE then, I would just use Hellfire and use fury on single target.

However in caster form you never want to Harvest life over Hellfire.

My bad, should have realised that myself. Thanks a lot for the help.

Edit:

Actually the information is wrong then (under the AoE section):

Spell Priority: Caster Form

Corruption - Apply to each enemy.
Hand of Gul'dan - Use on cooldown.
Harvest Life - Use as filler.

I guess where my misunderstanding came from. If hellfire is better than harvest life in caster form then this information is wrong and should be corrected.

[Brusalk]

It does ~20% more damage then Harvest life and generate the same amount of fury, it is not useless

Hellfire generates 3 fury/sec/target, while harvest life generates 10 /sec + 3 fury/sec/target. ( 3/sec/target vs 10/sec + 3/sec/target )

Unless the tooltip's wrong you should always harvest life instead of hellfire from a pure fury point of view. Especially with low numbers of mobs as with 2 mobs it's 6/sec for hellfire vs 13/sec with harvest life.


Hellfire probably beats out harvest life in terms of damage vs fury gain when there's a large number of mobs as the damage probably overweighs the gain of fury.

[zinnin]

Hellfire generates 3 fury/sec/target, while harvest life generates 10 /sec + 3 fury/sec/target. ( 3/sec/target vs 10/sec + 3/sec/target )

Unless the tooltip's wrong you should always harvest life instead of hellfire from a pure fury point of view. Especially with low numbers of mobs as with 2 mobs it's 6/sec for hellfire vs 13/sec with harvest life.


Hellfire probably beats out harvest life in terms of damage vs fury gain when there's a large number of mobs as the damage probably overweighs the gain of fury.

The tooltip for Hellfire is wrong, it generates the same 10 fury \ 3 fury for extra targets.

[pkm]

Haste, critical strike, mastery

Is that right? I thought mastery came first?

[Brusalk]

Haste, critical strike, mastery

Is that right? I thought mastery came first?

They're all so close that the only way to know is to sim yourself.

[Grab]

Since a few days demonolgy seems to have a problem. I am not sure so I wanted to share this with other warlocks just to know if I am the only one or not. So I was used to just spamm the touch of chaos spell in metamorphosis, nothing special right there. But as mentioned, since a few days, when I keep just spamming the button for touch of chaos the spell triggers much much slower than it should. It seems to be a problem with the GCD. When I push the button for touch of chaos in the right and constant same gap it however works. But this just sucks because I have to watch at my Touch of Chaos spell very carefully and cant just spamm the button like before. Hope you understand what I mean

[nightrianna]

I am guessing, but like affli stats change when it hits over 480 ilvl, Demo stats values of haste n ccrit skyrocket over mastery past 480 because u can obtain sooo much more crit n haste. For example http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ihilare/simple this is my warlock n i tested both fulll mastery n full haste n haste does wayyy more dmg and my spells don't hit much harder when i have full mastery, nor do my pets hit any harder so i want haste and crit build(wtb sha touch gem)

[Brusalk]

Since a few days demonolgy seems to have a problem. I am not sure so I wanted to share this with other warlocks just to know if I am the only one or not. So I was used to just spamm the touch of chaos spell in metamorphosis, nothing special right there. But as mentioned, since a few days, when I keep just spamming the button for touch of chaos the spell triggers much much slower than it should. It seems to be a problem with the GCD. When I push the button for touch of chaos in the right and constant same gap it however works. But this just sucks because I have to watch at my Touch of Chaos spell very carefully and cant just spamm the button like before. Hope you understand what I mean

Are you using a wand? The auto-attack in meta form triggers the "Shoot" ability when a wand is equipped which itself causes a GCD. You have to constantly move around or /stopattack to get around it. The only way to not have that problem is to use a sword or other non-wand in your MH.

---------- Post added 2012-11-15 at 12:49 PM ----------

I am guessing, but like affli stats change when it hits over 480 ilvl, Demo stats values of haste n ccrit skyrocket over mastery past 480 because u can obtain sooo much more crit n haste. For example http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ihilare/simple this is my warlock n i tested both fulll mastery n full haste n haste does wayyy more dmg and my spells don't hit much harder when i have full mastery, nor do my pets hit any harder so i want haste and crit build(wtb sha touch gem)

You should never stack stats as demo, you should aim to keep haste/crit/mastery close together and which one you have more of is of little consequence. If you truly want to min-max you can reforge-plot the 3 stats in simcraft with your gear to see which is worth more, but they'll be so close stacking is not what you want to do.

[Grab]

Are you using a wand? The auto-attack in meta form triggers the "Shoot" ability when a wand is equipped which itself causes a GCD. You have to constantly move around or /stopattack to get around it. The only way to not have that problem is to use a sword or other non-wand in your MH.[COLOR="red"]

Yes I have the Elegon wand equipped. Thank you very much for the information.

[nightrianna]

you would never ever get crit equal to that of haste or mastery -_- n when u get 4piece it knocks dark soul down to 1min 60sec lining it with imp swarm... that is only but one of many reasons i can see haste being the major stat... n i cannot sim my toon atm because i get a user error in it-_-

[jokern]

I got an wild imp question. As stated above it might not be an dps increase when using the glyph but how about the fury gained when or not using it? I think ive read it somewhere that it should/could be used that way to get moar meta uptime and therefore become an dps increase?

[Jessicka]

You should never stack stats as demo, you should aim to keep haste/crit/mastery close together and which one you have more of is of little consequence. If you truly want to min-max you can reforge-plot the 3 stats in simcraft with your gear to see which is worth more, but they'll be so close stacking is not what you want to do.

If this were true, any given stat would loose value as you began to stack it too far ahead of the others; that simply doesn't happen.