[5.4] Demonology Warlock Guide

[Deleted]

Demo is alot behind on the balls then destro. And the only ''hard'' part of the encounter is killing the balls , adds in time and destro wins on that. For your first kill you would be better of playing destro unless your guild is really lacking in boss dmg but destro does just a bit less then demo on boss.

[Deleted]

afaik that isnt true, herminus, but i might be wrong, all i know is that most of destro's aoe comes from burning embers and having to pull their embers is pretty bad, demo has on demand burst aoe, something destro doesnt have as much of, if you were right, then why is every lock ive seen, demo on that fight if destro is better for balls, wouldnt make sense to me. demo is quite a bit ahead on everything else on that fight if destro is better for ball aoe.

[Brusalk]

afaik that isnt true, herminus, but i might be wrong, all i know is that most of destro's aoe comes from burning embers and having to pull their embers is pretty bad, demo has on demand burst aoe, something destro doesnt have as much of, if you were right, then why is every lock ive seen, demo on that fight if destro is better for balls, wouldnt make sense to me. demo is quite a bit ahead on everything else on that fight if destro is better for ball aoe.

I believe that the discussion is about Ra-den and not Lei Shen.

[Deleted]

oh, i need to l2comprehend lol, yeah on ra-den destro seem to be the spec to use.

[Deleted]

Demo is alot behind on the balls then destro. And the only ''hard'' part of the encounter is killing the balls , adds in time and destro wins on that. For your first kill you would be better of playing destro unless your guild is really lacking in boss dmg but destro does just a bit less then demo on boss.

What is your definition of "alot"? I would say demo is like 15% behind destro on ball damage. I tried destro like 25 tries and would say that destruction is extremely overrated if people think its best spec _BY FAR_ on that boss.

But of course people only talk about their own experience in these things. Maybe I'm bad destro and our locks are bad as destro, or maybe your locks are bad as demo etc..

[Xorn]

So with the buffs to Imps and DG coming tomorrow are we looking at a substantial damage increase, or is it largely negligible?

[Werst]

Doomguard doing the same damage it did in firelands vs actually chain casting you mean lol? Easy to figure out: take his per cast damage and chain it over his 60 sec lifespan with his base cast time. Deduct the 16-17 casts he does on live. That is your gain roughly speaking. Right now the DG is pretty meh for a 10 min CD and certainly a 60 sec CD doesn't fit into "raid dps cooldowns" very well. I mean if he were 3 min/20 sec or 5 min/30 sec that would make more sense. I am not aware of any changes to imps other than more lei shen trinket upgrades thus more critting dooms thus more imps.

[Deleted]

So with the buffs to Imps and DG coming tomorrow are we looking at a substantial damage increase, or is it largely negligible?

If i remember correctly, they fixed Wild Imps and DG's time between casts to scale with haste? I don't know exactly how fast they cast now, but after the patch it's more beneficial to use Swarm Imps with DS, because they scale dynamically and they cast more fireballs within DS duration. How big DPS increase it is, it depends how many fireballs they can cast in that 20secs compared to now.

[Gremory1]

If i remember correctly, they fixed Wild Imps and DG's time between casts to scale with haste? I don't know exactly how fast they cast now, but after the patch it's more beneficial to use Swarm Imps with DS, because they scale dynamically and they cast more fireballs within DS duration. How big DPS increase it is, it depends how many fireballs they can cast in that 20secs compared to now.

The exact quote is:

The following summoned pets/totems will now chain cast their spells with no delay between casts, allowing them to cast their spells more frequently in the same amount of time.
Death Knight: Gargoyle
Druid: Force of Nature (Balance, Restoration), Mirror Image (Symbiosis)
Mage: Mirror Image, Water Elemental
Shaman: Searing Totem
Warlock: Doomguard, Terrorguard, Wild Imp

I don't think it's just that it scales with haste now as with 35-40% haste that would be massively overpowered for demonology imps. I'm just wondering if this is a 1% gain and they previously had a very small gap between casts, or if this is a substantial 5-10% gain in wild imp damage.

[Brusalk]

The exact quote is:

The following summoned pets/totems will now chain cast their spells with no delay between casts, allowing them to cast their spells more frequently in the same amount of time.
Death Knight: Gargoyle
Druid: Force of Nature (Balance, Restoration), Mirror Image (Symbiosis)
Mage: Mirror Image, Water Elemental
Shaman: Searing Totem
Warlock: Doomguard, Terrorguard, Wild Imp

I don't think it's just that it scales with haste now as with 35-40% haste that would be massively overpowered for demonology imps. I'm just wondering if this is a 1% gain and they previously had a very small gap between casts, or if this is a substantial 5-10% gain in wild imp damage.

IIRC Wild Imps will cast 5 bolts before despawning.

All this will change for imps is getting those 5 out quicker which could be better, or could be worse.
If you pop imps for DS all those imps will get their casts off during DS.
If you have an imp spawn with no procs, but get procs later on when the imp would've otherwise been out (before the change) then you could lose damage that way.


I believe it is a buff for Doomguard/Terrorguard however, as those are up for 1 minute, and aren't limited in the amount of casts they can do like imps are.

[Mazda]

I believe it is a buff for Doomguard/Terrorguard however, as those are up for 1 minute, and aren't limited in the amount of casts they can do like imps are.

Good. We all know Doomguard is the worst 10 minute CD in the game in its current iteration.

[Xorn]

Perhaps now haste will increase the number of casts per imp?

[Brusalk]

Perhaps now haste will increase the number of casts per imp?

I doubt it. The tooltip for imps states specifically that each imp will cast 5 bolts before returning to the nether.

---------- Post added 2013-05-20 at 12:41 PM ----------

Good. We all know Doomguard is the worst 10 minute CD in the game in its current iteration.

Understatement of the year.

[Hellfury]

Perhaps now haste will increase the number of casts per imp?

I think that would be too powerfull.

The CD being reduced by haste its imo becuase blizzard couldn't scale guardians with haste, maybe they can now, but to make imps scale they casts with haste they would remove the haste affecting the CD. I prefer the CD being affected by haste we all know how powerful it is with meta.

[woly]

I doubt it. The tooltip for imps states specifically that each imp will cast 5 bolts before returning to the nether.

Im pretty sure its 10 bolts, but they generate 5 demonic fury per bolt.

[Deleted]

What is your definition of "alot"? I would say demo is like 15% behind destro on ball damage. I tried destro like 25 tries and would say that destruction is extremely overrated if people think its best spec _BY FAR_ on that boss.

But of course people only talk about their own experience in these things. Maybe I'm bad destro and our locks are bad as destro, or maybe your locks are bad as demo etc..

I play warlock in my guild. And i'm better as demo then destro. But destro still does way more dmg on balls then demo because the only dmg you have as demo on them is go into meta and use ToC or soulfire and ToC does like 60k dmg per use without any int procs. Wild imps are very slow at switching targets with you aswell so they don't even switch to it, atleast not for me. If you play with pet the felguard will have quite a lot travel time to the balls aswell. Destro would be much better since you can just use 2 chaos bolts and then just finish it off with shadowburn if needed.

[Count Zero]

Faster wild imp casts will sure help with fury generation for openers

[Brusalk]

Im pretty sure its 10 bolts, but they generate 5 demonic fury per bolt.

Ah is it? I stand corrected. Was trying to just remember.

[Deleted]

Haste definitely increases Wild Imps casting speed. With 34% haste they had 1.9 casting time, when my metagem procced they had 1.5 sec casting time. And to be honest they were chain casting the fireball, maybe 0.1-0.2 sec between casts. So either they have implemented the change already or they remove the 0.1sec between casts and if that's the case, its not gonna be anything huge.

[Gremory1]

Haste definitely increases Wild Imps casting speed. With 34% haste they had 1.9 casting time, when my metagem procced they had 1.5 sec casting time. And to be honest they were chain casting the fireball, maybe 0.1-0.2 sec between casts. So either they have implemented the change already or they remove the 0.1sec between casts and if that's the case, its not gonna be anything huge.

Well - sure, but as far as a patch where we weren't supposed to get buffs, even a 1% damage increase is nice. In addition, damage now > damage later as far as most fights go. Either there's a burn requirement or an add that you can burn down (i.e. Sul). I'm sure if you summed the entire damage the imp swarm did and there was a way for people to convert it into a single instant cast that did all the damage right as you cast it (and demonic fury wasn't a consideration), that everybody would take it.