[5.4] Demonology Warlock Guide

[Kink]

They really should sticky these guides...

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Warlock-Guide

Good thing they are.

[Lanorala]

Ok so I recently got some advice to use Immolation aura more often on fights with 3 or more targets. I seem to struggle with using it properly.

My question is; do you guys typically bank enough fury to use it for its entire duration? Or do you more so stance dance to meta pop IM-A for a few ticks then pop back out? I typically feel that using IM-A makes me go OOF- or Out of Fury rather which I know is a no-no to optimize stance dancing (having enough fury to pop back into meta for doom and SF procs )

So how do you guys do it?

[Janglybits]

Ok so I recently got some advice to use Immolation aura more often on fights with 3 or more targets. I seem to struggle with using it properly.

My question is; do you guys typically bank enough fury to use it for its entire duration? Or do you more so stance dance to meta pop IM-A for a few ticks then pop back out? I typically feel that using IM-A makes me go OOF- or Out of Fury rather which I know is a no-no to optimize stance dancing (having enough fury to pop back into meta for doom and SF procs )

So how do you guys do it?

You generally want to make sure you have enough DF banked to IA for the full duration of MF.

[Zharradan]

how many weeks till you start doing a good dps as demon, comming from destro (after almost 12months without touching demon)??

I want to reroll but i don't want to upset my guildies, i do a fine dps as destro, and I find affliction boring and too unstable, so I want to try demon just for the lulz, but i don't want to be perceived as a slaker

I know it depends, but there's some little things you learn once you do a fight several times that really increases your output, maybe 3 weeks? maybe less? idk, is there some obscure thing we should do on SoO bosses? (a.k.a padding huehue)

[Woz]

how many weeks till you start doing a good dps as demon, comming from destro (after almost 12months without touching demon)??

I want to reroll but i don't want to upset my guildies, i do a fine dps as destro, and I find affliction boring and too unstable, so I want to try demon just for the lulz, but i don't want to be perceived as a slaker

I know it depends, but there's some little things you learn once you do a fight several times that really increases your output, maybe 3 weeks? maybe less? idk, is there some obscure thing we should do on SoO bosses? (a.k.a padding huehue)

When I switched over it was a pretty big adjustment - but the best thing you could do is to just hit the dummies up and practice your rotation before the raid. Once you feel you can do the rotation well enough then go in with the expectation of no longer topping the meter (at first) but doing mediocre damage until you get comfortable with multidotting/fight mechanics/when(and when not to) felstorm, etc

[Deleted]

how many weeks till you start doing a good dps as demon, comming from destro (after almost 12months without touching demon)??

After we cleared SoO I pretty much went straight back to demo from destro, and the majority of bosses I at least met my destro DPS from the previous clear. Obviously this is anecdotal and I prefer playing demo, but playing demo isn't a huge hindrance to the raid on the final bosses (where it would matter at all), unless you have to do mines on siegecrafter/engineers on garrosh.

Get a black blood, practice the shadowflame stacking, 10 stack dooms and be ready to use MF.

Note: This is purely from a 25 man PoV.

[Deleted]

Snip

QFT.

The same can be said for 10 man too, mostly. A few fights can suck depending on strat, like Nazgrim we still tank boss away from adds, and Spoils is pretty shitty for Demo compared to Destro, but all in all Demonology is fine on pretty much every single encounter.

Mannoroth's on 10 man still really useful on quite a few encounters.

Guild is slowly transitioning to fully 25 man, so looking forward to see how much better it fares. Second skull banner again to actually empower Soul Fires will be very sweet.

[Deleted]

I hope this has not been asked before:

The spreadsheet adds 0.3 to the crit damage for Skull Banner. Does it work this way? Tooltip says it's 20%, so I thought it maybe should be 0.2.

[Zinnin]

I hope this has not been asked before:

The spreadsheet adds 0.3 to the crit damage for Skull Banner. Does it work this way? Tooltip says it's 20%, so I thought it maybe should be 0.2.

And this is why more people should double check shit for me =P Thanks and Fixed.

[Soulzar]

how many weeks till you start doing a good dps as demon, comming from destro (after almost 12months without touching demon)??

I fight the same thing. I want to mess with Spec, but don't want growing pains to effect the raid. Outside of getting comfortable with your rotation and shaking off the rust, the biggest thing for me is relearning the fights. You don't have wipe after wipe to refine how you execute each element of the fight. Learning how to min/max nuances of the spec in correlation to fight mechanics and flow, to get the most out of yourself is the bigger hurdle.

[Chaosturn]

Maybe I'm blind and missed it, but please add the opener to the OP!

[Zynx]

So I'm also getting back into Demo (bored as all hell with Destro/Aff) and I've got two questions:

I remember before reading about a bug with Supremacy Felguard where he would cap his energy before using an ability. Is that still an issue? Should I macro his ability into shadow bolt or something if so? I usually go Service as Demo but for stuff outside raid I get lazy.

Corruption: Does ToC extend this or refresh? What I'm asking is, if apply Cor with 10 stack + meta, can I roll that forever or does it recalc on every ToC? I think it's the latter, but just checking.

Sorry if those were in the guide, I didn't notice when I went through again.

[Zstr]

Corruption: Does ToC extend this or refresh? What I'm asking is, if apply Cor with 10 stack + meta, can I roll that forever or does it recalc on every ToC? I think it's the latter, but just checking.

it's refresh

[Zinnin]

Maybe I'm blind and missed it, but please add the opener to the OP!

I did, just keep in mind that it changes slightly based on the fight / your gear / and your talents and glyphs.

[Alarinth]

Opening Rotation
So, there is a few different things that might change up your opener rotation based on if you are using Imp Swarm, GoServ, Mannoroth's Fury of what fight you are doing. However this is the basic Opening rotation that I follow:

Prepot -> Precast Soulfire -> Hand of Gul'dan -> Corruption -> GoServ -> Berserking / Dark Soul / On Use Cooldowns -> Imp Swarm -> Hand of Gul'dan -> Metamorphosis -> Doom

Just some thoughts I've had for the past weeks. What if you leave Berserking before imp Swarm, but put Dark Soul and other on-use clickys after the metamorphosis? You get 2 more GCDs with Dark Soul that you can spend on Soul Fire etc. Personally I've been using this approach;

Prepot -> Precast Soul Fire -> Corruption -> GoServ -> Hand of Gul'dan -> Shadow Bolt x3 -> Berserking -> Imp Swarm -> Hand of Gul'dan -> Metamorphosis -> Doom -> Dark Soul and other CDs (this is less than 1.5s later than the 2nd HoG, and allows for snapshotting Shadowflame, and gives you 2 extra GCDs of Dark Soul) -> 2nd Doom

I haven't done any maths on this though, and don't know if the damage you get from SF with DS for 2 more GCDs outweighs the imp damage lost from 2s less with dark soul.
edit: I see now that the GoServ gets a lot less uptime with Dark Soul by my opener. That might matter a fair bit...

[Zinnin]

So quick breakdown on a random opener for me:

Zinnin: 15,166,366
- Cloak: 2,962,185
- Soul Fire: 2,962,185
- Shadowflame: 2,855,243
- Drain Life: 1,879,483
- Touch of Chaos: 1,740,681
- Corruption: 1,231,059
- Doom: 983,967
- Stormlash: 239,109
- Hand of Gul'dan: 233,890
- Shadow Bolt: 133,775

Soul Fire casts: 4
Drain Life casts: 1
Touch of Chaos: 5

Pets Total: 8,186,626
-Jhuutom 2,176,470
-Wild Imp 2,585,545
-Fel Guard 1,999,952
-Doomguard 1,424,659

Soul Fire DMG %: 12.4
Pet DMG%: 35
Nuke DMG%: 28%

The reason I pop DS right away is because Nuke damage isn't as large as you would assume compared to DoTs and Pets. Having DS up for a good portion of Black Blood for your pets will make them hit extremely hard. On this pull Felstorm was 42% of my GoServ felguards damage, if you wait to pop DS until you go into meta you most likely won't be buffing that felstorm.

Black Blood is also the reason I no longer put shadow bolts in my opener rotation, the faster you get into Meta the more value you are going to gain out of it, having casts during Black Blood is way more damage then a few more casts in meta / DS.

[Zevoa]

woooooooops

[Chrispotter]

So quick breakdown on a random opener for me:

Zinnin: 15,166,366
- Cloak: 2,962,185
- Soul Fire: 2,962,185
- Shadowflame: 2,855,243
- Drain Life: 1,879,483
- Touch of Chaos: 1,740,681
- Corruption: 1,231,059
- Doom: 983,967
- Stormlash: 239,109
- Hand of Gul'dan: 233,890
- Shadow Bolt: 133,775

Soul Fire casts: 4
Drain Life casts: 1
Touch of Chaos: 5

Pets Total: 8,186,626
-Jhuutom 2,176,470
-Wild Imp 2,585,545
-Fel Guard 1,999,952
-Doomguard 1,424,659

Soul Fire DMG %: 12.4
Pet DMG%: 35
Nuke DMG%: 28%

The reason I pop DS right away is because Nuke damage isn't as large as you would assume compared to DoTs and Pets. Having DS up for a good portion of Black Blood for your pets will make them hit extremely hard. On this pull Felstorm was 42% of my GoServ felguards damage, if you wait to pop DS until you go into meta you most likely won't be buffing that felstorm.

Black Blood is also the reason I no longer put shadow bolts in my opener rotation, the faster you get into Meta the more value you are going to gain out of it, having casts during Black Blood is way more damage then a few more casts in meta / DS.

if you are not casting shadow bolts in the opener is it maybe worth hardcasting another soulfire to try and proc the set bonus for your opening doom? I never seem to get the set bonus from my precasted soulfire

[Zinnin]

I used to, and its viable to do with high haste. However, I don't like spending anytime out of meta while Black Blood is ticking up if I can help it, and there is no way that hard casting a soul fire in meta is viable. Just hope for some MC procs and get some off before BB hits 10.

[Zevoa]

if you are not casting shadow bolts in the opener is it maybe worth hardcasting another soulfire to try and proc the set bonus for your opening doom? I never seem to get the set bonus from my precasted soulfire

The only encounter I do this on is Garrosh; and, it's more for to do with when I use my initial HoG charges then anything.