[5.3] Demonology Warlock Guide

[zinnin]

The Demonology discussion of 5.0 and the pre-patch is located here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Week-Gear-List

Demonology Warlock Guide

Current as of patch 5.3

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Gearing
   
   • Stats
   • Gems and Enchants
   • BiS Gear List
   • Trinkets
3. Talents and Rotations
   
   • Grimoires & Pets
   • Imp Swarm
   • Demonic Fury Generation
   • Single Target & Cleave
   • AoE Rotation
   • Mechanics
4. Fight Specific Analysis

1. Introduction
This guide will try to collect everything related to PvE Demonology play, and present it in a quick but accurate layout. Everything in here is correct as far as I am aware, if you notice anything in here that is incorrect please bring it up so I can keep it updated .

Demonology is a spec that can give unparalleled control over damage and mobility, properlly used this spec can produce some of the top damage in a variety of scenarios. Your Primary pets, Wild Imps, Doomguard, Molten Core, Demonic Fury, and Dark Soul give you insane amounts of control on when and how you are doing damage.

If you are a person that generally enjoys have many powerful cooldowns and can plan out your fight ahead of time then I highly suggest that you give Demonology a try. Be aware though, that Demonic Fury is a relatively slow building resource, if you are the kind of player that plays mainly in the moment then I would suggest Affliction or Destro.


2. Gearing

A. Stats

Disclaimer:
So one of the things that players generally want right away in a guide is a quick and simple run down of what stats to gear for. For Demonology this is basically impossible because our secondary stats are so close together that depending on what trinkets you are using, what talents, if you have four piece, of just the level of you gear that Crit, Mastery, and Haste can all rotate being your top stat.

Evrelia did a really good simcraft tutorial that you can view here: Link

Quick and simple stat guide:

Intellect > Hit > Crit = Mastery = Haste

497 ilvl:

Int	Hit	Crit	Haste	Mastery
4.55	3.21	1.94	1.71	1.74

509ilvl:

Int	Hit	Crit	Haste	Mastery
4.95	3.90	2.33	1.97	2.22

535ilvl (Unerring Vision of Lei Shen):

Int	Hit	Crit	Haste	Mastery
6.41	5.53	2.63	3.80	3.27

*Again, these probably aren't going to be correct for your gear.


Intellect
This is our primary stat, everything we do scales with it and unlike some other classes our secondary stats will not trump it in gemming (at least in current gear)

Hit / Expertise
While some warlock specs (Affliction) can get away with not being hit capped, Demonology cannot. You need 15% or 5100 rating. With the release of MoP 1 point of Expertise is equal to 1 point of Hit.

Crit
Increases your crit chance by 1% every 600 rating. Soulfire now crits 100% of the time, and gains a damage increase based on your crit percentage, which makes this slightly less RNG then it used to be. Also, whenever Doom critically hits you spawn 1 Wild Imp that does good damage and will generate 50 fury over its duration.

Mastery
Increases basically all of our pets damage and increases the damage of metamorphosis by a solid amount. Also increases the damage while we are in caster form by a small amount. Unlike cataclysm, in Mists of Pandaria none of our abilities snapshot mastery.
1% Pet damage: ~600 Rating
1% Caster form damage: ~600 Rating
1% Metamorphosis damage: ~200 Rating

Haste
Haste rating increases the speed we cast, the rate our DoTs tick, how fast our Primary pets gain energy, and also decrease the cooldown of Imp Swarm and Demonic Calling. Touch of chaos is at a 1s GCD and is not effected by haste. You will need 425 rating for 1% haste.
Some important haste points:

• 3036 - Extra tick of Doom
• 4198 - Extra tick of corruption during heroism
• 4717 - Extra tick of corruption
• 7658 - Extra tick of corruption during heroism
• 8064 - Extra tick of shadowflame
• 8097 - Extra tick of doom during heroism

Generally you do not need to hit a corruption point because you refresh via ToC. Also, you should not be gearing for a haste break-point if haste is valued less the other stats unless being near that point is actually increasing the value of haste over the other stats. For the most part I have found that going for a specific haste break-point as demo has never really been worth it.

B. Gems and Enchants

Enchants

Shoulder	Greater Crane Wing Inscription
Cloak	Enchant Cloak - Superior Intellect
Chest	Enchant Chest - Glorious Stats
Gloves*	Enchant Gloves - Superior Mastery
	Enchant Gloves - Greater Haste
	Enchant Gloves - Superior Expertise
Bracer	Enchant Bracer - Super Intellect
Belt	Living Steel Belt Buckle
Boots**	Enchant Boots - Pandaren's Step
	Enchant Boots - Greater Haste
Pants	Pattern: Greater Cerulean Spellthread
Weapon	Enchant Weapon - Jade Spirit
Off-hand	Enchant Off-Hand - Major Intellect

*You can use either Haste or Mastery depending on what stat is better, but should generally only use expertise if you cannot get hit capped through the rest of your gear.

**As Demonology warlocks, we have a lot of mobility and can probably get away without having a run speed enchant on our boots, but I wouldn't recommend doing so.

Gems

Meta	Burning Primal Diamond
Red	Brilliant Primordial Ruby
Yellow*	Brilliant Primordial Ruby
	Artful Vermilion Onyx
	Potent Vermilion Onyx
Blue	Veiled Imperial Amethyst

*In the yellow socket you should generally pick whatever secondary you are planning on stacking, however I recommend using Artful because it makes your gear more cross-spec compatible. Currently it appears that somewhere between Heroic T14 and Heroic T15 gear we will switch from using Int > 2 Mastery to 2 Mastery > Int. When this happens you will want to switch from red gems to orange gems in red sockets, and orange gems to yellow gems in the yellow sockets.

C. Trinkets

Generally for demonology you want trinkets that have a high value proc, over trinkets with a high passive stat. This is because you have so much control over your cooldowns and can place most of your damage in very small windows throughout the fight.

5.2 Trinkets
This is a very early list. The Lei Shen trinket requires you do make sure you are never not in Meta when metamorphosis is on cooldown, which requires slightly different play then normal. Also, I edited the default APL specifically for the Unnering Vision of Lei Shen, so it is going to be higher on this list then it might be in practice.


5.0 Trinkets

1. Essence of Terror 509
2. Light of the Cosmos 502
3. Relic of Yu'lon 476
4. Shock-Charger Medallion 496
5. Essence of Terror 496
6. Flashfrozen Resin Globule 463
7. Light of the Cosmos 489
8. Jade Magistrate Figurine 489

3. Talents and Rotation

A. Grimoires and Pets

Grimoires
For Demonology you basically only choose between the Grimoire of Supremacy and Grimoire of Service. The DPS difference between the two is so small that depending on your cooldown usage and the fight that you can use either one.
Grimoire of Service does have a few perks to it however. On any fight with AoE having an extra Felstorm every two minutes is going to outweigh the 20% increased Felstorm from the Wrathguard. GoServ will also generate 60 fury over its duration.

GoSac becomes a viable option when you have the Unerring Vision of Lei Shen, and becomes the best option when you have multiple Dooms ticking the entire fight. At high gear levels it may be worth using GoSac in most cases but you should Sim your character to be sure.

You should use Felguard in almost every case, however if you find that your pet is spending too much time traveling you can use a Succubus for a minimal DPS loss.

Doomguard and Infernal
Doomguard is currently not gaining extra casts with more haste which means its best use is generally sub 20% or when there is a minute left.

The majority of the damage that you will get from Infernal is from Infernal Awakening. In general you won't actually get much damage from the Infernal itself, maybe 200-300k. The damage of Infernal Awakening is buffed by Metamorphosis so you want to make sure you are in Meta when you cast it. If you have DS up you need to hit ~7-8 targets to equal the damage of Doomguard, if DS isn't up you will want ~15 targets.

B. Imp Swarm

For the most part the new Major Glyphs are not going to effect your damage at all, with the exception of Imp Swarm.
Without the Glyph of Imp Swarm you will passively gain the Demonic Calling buff every 20s, which will spawn one Imp. This will grant you 6 Imps \ 2 minutes.

With the glyph you will passively gain the Demonic Calling buff every 24s. This means you get 5 Imps \ 2 minutes. You also have the option to use Imp Swarm which instantly spawn 5 Imps, but then make it so you cannot gain the Demonic Calling buff for 2 minutes. Regardless if you use Imp Swarm or not when you have the Glyph in you will gain 5 Imps \ 2 minutes.

This means that for the Glyph of Imp Swarm to be a dps increase you need to use Imp Swarm when the damage of your 5 Imps will make up for losing 1 Imp \ 2 minutes. Generally if you can use Dark Soul plus a trinket it will be worth it. The Demonic Calling passive and Imp Swarm cooldown are both reduced by haste.

In 5.2 there are a couple of different ways you can use Imp Swarm. If you are gearing to the 8097 haste point the best way to use it is coupled with Dark Soul, at this haste level your imp swarm will come off cooldown with enough time for a Demonic Calling proc to happen right before Dark Soul comes off cooldown, this allows for 6 Imps to be spawned every DS. If you are not at the haste point and have the Legendary Meta it is best to use Imp Swarm during a Meta proc. With the rPPM built in safety you might want to consider waiting on your first Imp Swarm for the first 30% haste proc regardless which way you decide to use Imp Swarm.

C. Demonic Fury Generation

Understanding where and how you gain Demonic fury is very important to making sure that you have the proper amount of fury set aside for up and coming cooldowns \ procs. These numbers are at 0% haste.

Single target fury generation:

Soulfire	15 Fury/s
Shadowbolt	10 Fury/s
Fel Flame	10 Fury/s
Hand of Gul'dan	8 Fury/s (Entire DoT)
Legion Strike	2.5 Fury/s
Corruption	2 Fury/s (36 Fury per cast)
Wild Imps	2 Fury/s (50 Fury per Imp)

AoE fury generation:

Hellfire	10 Fury/s + 3 Fury/s per extra target
Harvest Life	10 Fury/s + 3 Fury/s per extra target

D. Single Target & Cleave

In general your single target rotation will follow this priority:

1. Dark Soul: Knowledge
2. Grimoire: Felguard if talented
3. Glyph of Imp Swarm if Glyphed
4. Summon Doomguard under 20% or if there is a minute left on the fight
5. Metamorphosis* during Cooldowns or Procs (Immolation Aura can be used at 3+ targets)

• Keep Metamorphosis: Doom Ticking on all targets
• Metamorphosis: Touch of Chaos Is your main fury dump

6. Keep Corruption Ticking on all targets
7. Hand of Gul'dan** when you have 2 stacks
8. Felguard: Felstorm on CD unless there will be AoE opportunities
9. Soul Fire when MC is up***
10. Life Tap if below 50% mana (you want to keep high mana so you don't have to life tap as much under 25%)
11. Shadow Bolt

Single target DPS as Demonology is very dependant on good cooldown management, try to stack as many cooldowns together as possible without delaying the use to the point where you might lose uptime on a fight.

*Metamorphosis - You want to plan to use your Demonic Fury when you have other damage increases like Dark Soul or trinket procs. With the t14 4pc you will basically spend the majority of your fury during Dark soul, with some extra fury for other trinket procs. This means that if you entered in meta during a proc that you should be canceling meta right as it ends to save fury for future procs.

**Hand of Guldan- The 'correct' way to use Hand of Gul'dan is to wait until there is less then 6s until you get 2 charges of HoG. You then want to use one charge, cast a few spells, and then clip shadowflame right before it runs out so you have ~5s of a one stack shadowflame, then 6s of a 2 stack
shadowflame. Doing this correctly will make Hand of Gul'dan out-preform Chaos Wave virtually always, and makes Chaos Wave pretty useless in PvE.

***Soul Fire - Most of the time using Soul Fire during metamorphosis isn't going to be worth it. If you are at high fury, have a lot of very strong cooldowns active, or are under 25% you will probably get a dps increase out of using soulfire in Meta. If none of these are the case I would suggest mainly using MC procs during extra Int procs where meta isn't already being used. MC stacks can be treated as another resource because they stack up to 10 and have a long (30s) window where they can be refreshed, so you don't want to just use them as they happen for optimal damage.

E. AoE Rotation

Demonology AoE is very encounter specific and has a lot of different situational options. When encountering an AoE situation you need to figure out how long the targets will be up for, how often the adds might spawn and if you will run out of fury during the AoE.

Your AoE rotation will follow this priority:

Cooldowns
1. Dark Soul: Knowledge
2. Grimoire: Felguard if talented
3. Glyph of Imp Swarm if Glyphed
4. Felguard: Felstorm on CD

Meta Form
1. Metamorphosis: Immolation Aura
2. Carrion Swarm if you are in Meta, and corruptions are at max duration (Recommend using the glyph)
3. Keep Metamorphosis: Doom Ticking on all targets. Under 8 Targets it needs to tick once, over 8 it should tick at least twice.
4. Chaos Wave If the targets will be alive under 10 seconds and you will not run out of fury for AoE
5. Use Metamorphosis: Void Ray to maintain Corruptions if they are up.
6. Use Harvest Life if your targets do not have Corruptions to be maintained

Caster Form
1. Hand of Gul'dan - Double Stack like on single target if the targets will live long enough
2. Keep Corruption Ticking on all targets. The following chart shows the time needed for the GCD spent casting corruption to be greater then casting hellfire.
3. Hellfire

# of Targets	Time Needed
3	14s
4	18s
5	22s
10	42s
15	64s
20	84s

F. Mechanics

Dot Damage
Damage from DoTs DO NOT automatically benefit from procs, you have to refresh them manually or update them with Fel Flame \ Touch of Chaos \ Void Ray. This does mean that if your DoTs are already gaining damage from a previous proc, and you refresh via any method that your DoTs will lose the damage from that proc. I suggest using using the addon 'Affdots' for tracking DoT strength.

Corruption does not get any benefit from metamorphosis, however it does get a benefit from the caster form mastery. There is a slight delay upon leaving Metamorphosis where you don't have the caster mastery increase, so you do not want to cast corruption or hand of guldan directly after leaving meta.

Depending on the strength of you procs when you are casting Doom, you may want to consider double casting it to have a higher uptime of Doom + procs.

Shadowflame
The damage of shadowflame is calculated upon being applied to the target, and not when HoG is cast. This means that you can enter meta after your second HoG, and shadowflame will be buffed with Meta.

Refreshing DoTs
At level 90 you gain the Pandemic passive. This allows you to refresh a DoT under 50% of its normal duration without losing DPS. For example: Corruption has a base duration of 18 seconds, this means you can refresh at under 9s and it will go to a maximum of 27s. I strongly recommend using the addon 'Affdots' for tracking DoT strength.

4. Fight Specific Guides

[Teye]

Refreshing DoTs
At level 90 you gain the Pandemic passive. This allows you to refresh a DoT under 50% of its normal duration without losing DPS. For example: Corruption has a base duration of 18 seconds, this means you can refresh at under 9s and it will go to a maximum of 27s. I strongly recommend using the addon 'Affdots' for tracking DoT strength.

Corruption should never be manually reapplied. You should only be applying it once at the beginning of the fight, and keeping it active with ToC for the rest.

[zinnin]

It's just an example. That said, however, I do think that there are situations that you would manually reapply corruption. In sim's refreshing corruption manually when there are no procs up is virtually identical to always refreshing via ToC.

[Depravitty]

Want sticky

[Seribus99]

haste to bracers> Int to bracers? just wondering if i missed something.

[zinnin]

haste to bracers> Int to bracers? just wondering if i missed something.

Nope your right, I just need to sleep more.....

[Killem]

Can you add the 3036 breakpoint for doom? It's currently the one that gets the best results for me with my gear.

[zinnin]

Can you add the 3036 breakpoint for doom? It's currently the one that gets the best results for me with my gear.

Done, I didn't add it initially because I didn't think people would be sitting that low on haste, but I can see how it would be useful information.

[Jessicka]

Corruption should never be manually reapplied. You should only be applying it once at the beginning of the fight, and keeping it active with ToC for the rest.

Popping Meta 'early' to refresh Corruption can, and will break your rotation causing a considerable DPS loss compared to manually refreshing. It's also worth noting that refreshing Corruption to it's full duration through ToC costs 240 Fury; again there can and will be better times to spend that Fury.

The spec is, above all else about resource management over executing a perfect rotation. Meshing the two is where the skill lies.

_____

You made no mention about Life Tap, which is where a lot of people seem to complain so I presume is causing people issues when they start out. Essentially I'd just point out that it's down to Soul Fire being expensive, and that you'll only get 2-3 Soul Fires out of a Life Tap and that therefore it's generally a good idea to get into a habbit of using LT every 3rd Soul Fire if they're in a situation when they're spamming it outside of Meta.

Otherwise, great guide as expected... even if I will continue to swear by Haste

[Viggers]

but i would have thought that popping into meta with big INT procs and using a few ToC will not only refresh corr, but also buff corr making it worth the lost fury?

[xskarma]

Allright, nice job Zinnin, stickified! I ask all of you to continue the discussion about all things Demonology in this thread.

[zinnin]

but i would have thought that popping into meta with big INT procs and using a few ToC will not only refresh corr, but also buff corr making it worth the lost fury?

For the most part you want to be using meta during large INT procs anyways, so yes then you want to refresh with ToC. I just argue that spending fury with 0 procs may not always be worth it. \

[Jessicka]

but i would have thought that popping into meta with big INT procs and using a few ToC will not only refresh corr, but also buff corr making it worth the lost fury?

In that case yes, but then you should be using ToC with the INT procs anyway. It's when you have no procs when it's less of a big deal. The real point is that even if you manage Corruption completely manually, it's only something like a 500DPS loss overall; that's minor enough on a Patchwerk that in real encounters that you could see a real terms increase by occasionally hard casting if it means better management of your rotation and use of Fury.

[Killem]

I am thinking of how to improve my DPS as Demo by downranking one of my trinkets to Flashfrozen Resin Globule again.

How may this work:

• DS has a cooldown of 1:20 with 4pc T14
• GoServ has 2:00 cooldown
• FRG has 2:30 cooldown
• Imp Swarm somewhere between 2:00 and 1:30

The plan would be to empower every second DS with the trinket, GoServ and FRG. But this has the downside of not using some CDs which might negate the bonus or lead even to a DPS loss.

I surely have to sim it out, but the APL must be modified, in order to do that cooldownstacking.

Am I missing some points that would lead to a DPS loss and make this idea obsolete?

[zinnin]

I have been using this since launch, and it is very good. This is why is I listed FRG so high in my guide. It also just happens to be that Yu'lon is almost always up at the same time as FRG, GoServ, and DS. Until you have Heroic trinkets I don't feel that it is worth replacing these. Unless the fight is on the longer side you don't lose a GoServ use.

[Xayton]

What would you consider to be the most optimal opener for Demo. I've tried many different ones and can't seem to find one that is glaringly better then another. My current one is;
Soul Fire, Curse of the Elements, Hand of Gul'Dan, Imp Swarm, Summon Terrorguard, Dark Soul: Knowledge, Corruption, Hand of Gul'Dan, Metamorphosis, Doom, ToC till drop out of Meta. I follow that up with Lifeblood and rapid fire Molten Core procs.

Also what would be the best way to manage execution phase. Soul Fire spam in caster to build fury then Soul Fire in Meta?

[luckydevours]

Maybe you can add to your "Grimoire"-section that GoServ synchronizes well with Dark Soul as long as you dont run with 4p T14. Otherwise GoSup could be worth another thought.

[kandalanu]

@Killem - thats why in my opinion each demo lock should use Shock-Charger Medallion. Even with T4 bonus its just to good trinket to waste it. Since we are trying to doing best during meta, trinket with "use" bonus is just great. Less RNG during fight (trinket proc etc) = profit for demo locks. You can easilly use DS on 2 trinket proc with this trinket - its almost impossible with others.



About topic - very nice basic information about demo. Just wondering why you didnt write anything about entering meta after casting second HoG for double ticks - we can also put it as and basic information.

[Teye]

What would you consider to be the most optimal opener for Demo. I've tried many different ones and can't seem to find one that is glaringly better then another. My current one is;
Soul Fire, Curse of the Elements, Hand of Gul'Dan, Imp Swarm, Summon Terrorguard, Dark Soul: Knowledge, Corruption, Hand of Gul'Dan, Metamorphosis, Doom, ToC till drop out of Meta. I follow that up with Lifeblood and rapid fire Molten Core procs.

Also what would be the best way to manage execution phase. Soul Fire spam in caster to build fury then Soul Fire in Meta?

Never pre-cast Soul Fire over Shadow Bolt. Shadow Bolt will use Demonic Calling, which is otherwise wasted when you pop Imp Swarm.

[Xayton]

Never pre-cast Soul Fire over Shadow Bolt. Shadow Bolt will use Demonic Calling, which is otherwise wasted when you pop Imp Swarm.

They both use Demonic Calling.